The Atlantis astronauts are backing out of deorbit preparations in the wake of another weather wave-off while mission managers hang on to hopes that conditions at Kennedy Space Center will clear enough for a Sunday morning landing on Florida's Space Coast.
The shuttle and its crew now are targeting a 10:11 a.m. landing on NASA's three-mile shuttle runway, but the astronauts could take a cross-country detour to Edwards Air Force Base.
The weather forecast for KSC remains iffy, but one thing is certain: the Atlantis astronauts will land on one coast or the other on Sunday.
The shuttle only has enough liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to stay in space until Monday. The chemical reactants are combined in the shuttle's three fuel cells o generate electricity to run shuttle systems.
NASA would not keep the shuttle up until Monday unless a major systems problem forced the agency to forego landing opportunities on Sunday.
Here are the tentative landing times for opportunities at KSC and Edwards on Sunday:++10:11 at KSC.
++11:39 a.m. at Edwards.
++11:42 a.m. at Northrup Strip in New Mexico.
++11:48 a.m. at KSC.
++1:18 p.m. at Edwards.
++1:20 p.m. at Northrup.
NASA mission managers will not opt for any of the opportunities at Northrup because runways there have been swamped by recent rains.
NASA waved off three opportunities to land at KSC today due to unstable weather. Low clouds hung over the shuttle runway and there was rain within 30 miles of the landing strip.
The astronauts ran in to a little trouble after the wave off. A chunk of ice built up in shuttle air conditioning lines and the astronauts remained suited until the engineers could make certain the ship's radiators would work as intended after the shuttle's payload bay doors were reopened.
Space news and analysis from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral 
6 comments:
Why does it seem like NASA plans their shuttle returns around holidays? Am I jumping to conclusions, but it seems like this will cause employees to be working on a holiday weekend, which means more pay...can't it be scheduled around non-holidays? Just a thought, with so many cutbacks and budget cuts.
Do you know why NASA's top shuttle flight rate is 8 per year?
It's because there are only 8 federal holidays during the year.
NASA calls its orbiters "birds." We call them HAWKs -- Holday And Weekend Killers.....
If weather had been good, Atlantis would have been on the ground Friday morning. If so, it would be in the OPF and everyone for the most part off for Memorial Day. Mother nature can be a PITA.
What irks me is the fact that NASA specifically calls up Edwards, gets everyone in position and then has no intention of landing there. What a waste of money. Maybe it is time to shut down and retool this waste of money. Even better, shut down the whole federal government and fix the leaks.
They obviously don't plan missions around holidays. Edwards is a last resort since it costs so much money to transport the orbiter back to KSC.
The shuttle missions cost so much money too. What's your point?
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