Posted on 08/29/2006 2:20:09 PM PDT by Ben Mugged
Five hours after starting space shuttle Atlantis on a slow crawl toward its hangar, NASA changed course Tuesday and sent it back to the launch pad, saying the forecast for Tropical Storm Ernesto had improved.
Atlantis was almost halfway into the 12-hour journey back to the Vehicle Assembly Building aboard a giant, caterpillar-track platform when NASA reversed course Tuesday afternoon.
"The hurricane track has taken it further west to where the winds have diminished and where we can tolerate them at the pad," said NASA spokesman Bill Johnson.
Ernesto's peak winds were expected to be less than 79 mph, the threshold at which it is mandatory to move the shuttle indoors, said NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham. Earlier, the National Hurricane Center had forecast a higher chance of such winds.
It takes eight days of preparations for liftoff once the shuttle returns to the launch pad. That means NASA has only about a day if it is to launch Atlantis by Sept. 7.
If Atlantis does not take off by then, NASA may have to wait for weeks, because a Russian spacecraft is scheduled to travel to the space station next month with two new crew members, and the orbiting outpost would be too crowded for a visit by the shuttle.
NASA is negotiating with the Russians over the launch dates of both the shuttle and the Soyuz spacecraft.
To give itself more launch opportunities in September, NASA was considering waiving a post-Columbia rule that says the space shuttle must be launched in clear daylight so that its external fuel tank can be photographed for broken-off pieces of foam like the one that doomed the shuttle in 2003.
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.ask.com ...
yah. If they miss this window, I hear the next daylight launch window is late October.
Your tax dollars at work.
"We are the hurricane experts.
Now if only we could get a hurricane.
Darn this global warming".
TS beerfart is the most non-storm of the century.
My wife just told me schools are closing in Polk county FL. So the schools are closing, but NASA is leaving the shuttle out. Makes me go Hmmmm.
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