Monday, April 19, 2010

Rollout called off for the night

Space shuttle Atlantis won't make it to launch pad 39A tonight because of lightning.

It'll attempt to leave the Vehicle Assembly Building again at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

Atlantis was scheduled to make the 3.4 mile trip at 8 p.m. tonight.

Officials were hopeful the weather would clear up and the trip atop the space center's giant crawler-transporter could happen at 9 p.m.

Shortly before 9 p.m. NASA officials made the decision to call off the rollout for the night.

This is the second time today weather has posed a problem for NASA officials.

Shuttle Discovery was scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center this morning, but two landing attempts were scrubbed because of weather.

Discovery astronauts get an extra 15th day in orbit and will try to land again either at KSC or Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Landing times for KSC are at 7:34 a.m. and 9:08 a.m. Times for Edwards are 9:01 a.m., 10:35 a.m. and 12:11 p.m. (all times Eastern).

About the Image: In the Vehicle Assembly Building last week, Atlantis is lowered into position over the mobile launcher platform in High Bay-1. Source: NASA

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like more overtime pay.

Mark Lopa said...

Atlantis will be stacked one more time for a possible rescue mission of Discovery's last flight, correct?

James Dean said...

Mark: Atlantis will go through some phase of processing, but I'm not sure it will be stacked. It may never leave the OPF if they know no rescue will be needed.