Weather forces shuttle launch delay
27.08.2006, 11:03
NASA has delayed the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis by 24 hours because of a lightning strike and other weather concerns, officials said Saturday.
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NASA managers said they wanted more time to see whether there was any damage from the lightning, which struck a wire attached to a tower used to protect the shuttle from such strikes at the launch pad.
They also were worried about storms passing through the area before launch time Sunday.
Shuttle weather officers had said earlier in the day that there was a 60 percent chance the weather would prevent the shuttle from blasting off at the scheduled launch time of 4:30 p.m. EDT Sunday.
NASA won't launch if there are storms within 23 miles of the shuttle landing runway, in case astronauts need to make an emergency landing.
The forecast was expected to improve dramatically for Monday and Tuesday, with only a 20 percent chance that weather would prevent a launch on either of those days. NASA plans had four potential launch times over five days.
Shuttle weather officers also were tracking Tropical Storm Ernesto, which was likely to enter the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday or Wednesday and threatened to reach hurricane strength. Ernesto wasn't expected to affect a launch early in the week, but it could cause problems if Atlantis doesn't lift off until later in the week.
In a worst-case scenario, if Ernesto were to strike Texas after the shuttle's launch and workers were forced to evacuate Mission Control in Houston, the shuttle astronauts would have to leave the station and return to Earth at the first opportunity. An evacuation would mean flight controllers couldn't sufficiently support a mission as complex as this, which will attach an addition to the space station, NASA managers said.
In that situation, NASA controllers and the astronauts would make every effort to leave the 17 1/2-ton addition the shuttle is carrying at the space station. That $372 million addition has two solar power wings that eventually will provide a quarter of the station's electricity.
"If we had to evacuate (Houston) ... we would not be able to execute the docked mission. ... Certainly not of the complexity of the one we're about to embark on," said Leroy Cain, launch integration manager. "We would leave the station in the safest configuration and come back and pick up the pieces ... on a subsequent mission."
Construction of the half-built space station has been on hiatus since the 2003 Columbia disaster, which killed seven astronauts.
Atlantis' mission is the first of 15 flights scheduled to finish building the space station before the cargo-carrying shuttles are retired in 2010.
"We have to let this one occur before the next ones can go," said Mike Suffredini, NASA space station program manager. "This is clearly in the critical path for success in assembly."