NASA aims to bring Endeavour to KSC Tuesday

The track of Hurricane Dean appears to be staying on path toward central Mexico for now. The forecast is decreasing the possibility that NASA will have to abandon the Mission Control Center before Endeavour's landing this week.

Indeed, there appears to be enough certainty about the hurricane track that Johnson Space Center will open tomorrow as planned. NASA is not implementing an emergency plan that was worked on throughout the weekend to prepare for a coming hurricane.

That gives the shuttle team more options for landing, and an increasing chance to bring Endeavour into the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Florida is the desired landing site because it saves time and money lost when the orbiter must be ferried home from California or New Mexico. The time of the first landing opportunity on Tuesday is about 12:31 p.m. The weather looks favorable, deputy shuttle program manager John Shannon said.

If the hurricane track stays on its track and doesn't threaten Houston, NASA might only try for landing at Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday and not consider the backup landing site in California. White Sands in New Mexico will not be used Tuesday.

If the weather doesn't work out Tuesday in Florida, the plan would be to try KSC first on Wednesday before looking at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

NASA decided to bring Endeavour home a day early, on Tuesday, because of the potential for the storm to force evacuation of JSC and Mission Control. Backup plans were prepared just in case, but the team is gaining confidence they won't have to be used.

The crew on orbit is finishing up some packing tasks after undocking from the International Space Station this morning and then inspecting their spaceship's heat-shielding for damage. The team on the ground will get to review the data from that inspection between now and tomorrow's Mission Management Team meeting. So far, no obvious signs of damage have been noted.

Endeavour will return to Earth with a small gouge in its heat-shielding thermal tiles, the result of a foam debris strike during launch. Tests and analyses on the ground have indicated that it is safe to bring Endeavour back through the atmosphere without repairing the damage, NASA says.