CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA canceled today’s spacewalk to inspect a snarled joint for a set of solar panels and instead instructed its orbiting astronauts to go out a day later to try to fix a torn solar wing.

The newly ripped wing is now the more pressing of the two problems at the international space station, both of which involve the crucial power system and threaten to disrupt future construction work.

NASA fears the damage could worsen and the wing could lose all power-collecting capability and become unstable. If that happened, the wing would have to be junked, said NASA’s space station program manager, Mike Suffredini.

“We’ve made it a priority to go repair it,” Suffredini said yesterday.

Engineers scrambled to put together a plan for a spacewalk as early as tomorrow to tackle the wing, which remains partially deployed. It ripped in two places as it was being unfurled by astronauts aboard the linked shuttle-station complex Tuesday, and a hinge may have been yanked and partially ripped.

Suffredini said engineers suspect the wing became snagged on a support for one of the wing’s guide wires. They do not want to reel it in to make it easier to access for spacewalkers, for fear it could be further dawmaged.

The torn section of the wing cannot be reached with the space station’s 58-foot robot arm. So NASA plans to attach the shuttle inspection boom to the station’s robot arm, and put Scott Parazynski on the boom to free the snagged part of the wing.

It helps that Parazynski is tall – 6-foot-2 – and has long arms. NASA doesn’t want him bumping the wing or touching its sunlight-collecting blankets. There would be no need to mend the tears.

“It’s not really very far outside of our scope of experience, and I’m comfortable that it’s something we’re going to be able to put together,” said flight director Derek Hassmann.