Mission Controllers at NASA have decided to pass up the first of six landing opportunities for the Space Shuttle Atlantis this morning because of weather at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The alternate landing facility, Edwards AFB in California, has no weather problems with light winds and few clouds.
But the team’s desire is to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida because that is the Shuttle’s home port.
The second landing opportunity is at 9:54 a.m. CDT at KSC. The de-orbit burn would occur at 8:45 a.m. CDT. There is an earlier opportunity coming up for Edwards and controllers are analyzing the information right now.
There are four more opportunities (two at Kennedy and three at Edwards) after that today and the Shuttle has enough supplies to make it to Monday.
The weather is definitely dicey at Kennedy for today.
Here is a visible satellite picture.
The KSC meso weather net:
But thunderstorms are lurking just offshore to the east of the Cape. There are rules regarding lightning proximity. Also, showers are increasing upstream of the landing facility and I just saw a lightning bolt in the showers on lightning detection. The shuttle cannot handle landing in showers because of the fargile naure of the protective tiles.
Here is the radar…
I am afraid those showers will be affecting KSC for a while.
We will be monitoring the shuttle’s landing opportunities throughout the day.
The seven-member crew is returning from a successful final servicing mission to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, extending the life of the orbiting observatory into the next decade.
