NASA flight controllers now have an extra day to launch the shuttle
Atlantis towards the International Space Station (ISS) this
month as mission managers added Sept. 8 among possible dates for the
planned liftoff, agency officials said Wednesday.
"We do have the option for the eighth, I can confirm that," NASA
spokesperson Katherine Trinidad told SPACE.com.
On Tuesday, NASA launch integration manager LeRoy Cain said Atlantis'
best bet for a potential liftoff ranged between Sept 6-7, the last two days in
the shuttle's flight window. A launch
pad lightning strike and subsequent
checks, as well as what is now Tropical Depression Ernesto, have delayed
the shuttle's launch from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.
The initial launch window for Atlantis' STS-115
mission to deliver new
solar arrays and trusses to the station stretched from Aug. 27 to Sept. 13,
but NASA
agreed to a Sept. 7 cutoff date to avoid conflicts with a planned ISS crew
swap mission aboard a Russian Soyuz vehicle.
Russia's Federal
Space Agency plans to launch that Soyuz spacecraft on Sept. 14, with a fallback
date of Sept. 18. NASA ISS managers were in discussions with their Russian
counterparts on whether to use that Sept. 18 reserve date, which would put the
Soyuz landing of the space station's current crew - Expedition
13 - before sunrise on Sept. 29.
U.S. and
Russian ISS managers hoped to preserve a lighted landing for the Expedition 13
crew as a safety measure, but do have past experience with nighttime Soyuz
returns, NASA ISS program manager Michael Sufferdini said in a Tuesday
teleconference. Night landings are not preferred because they can hamper
recovery efforts, which would be critical if the landing astronauts are in
distress, Sufferdini said.
"If the shuttle Atlantis lifts off on September 6-8, the
Soyuz will be launched on September 18," Nikolai Sevastyanov, president of
the Russian aerospace firm RSC Energia that launches Soyuz and Progress
spacecraft reporters Wednesday in Star City according to the Russian Interfax
News Agency.
At KSC, shuttle managers and engineers have gone to great effort to make
Atlantis' September launch window. Current NASA guidelines call for the shuttle
launch under daylight conditions to allow cameras on the ground, in the air and
aboard the spacecraft's launch stack to record the performance of external tank
modifications.
The cutoff to launch Atlantis this month under optimum lighting
conditions is Sept. 13.
On Tuesday, NASA shuttle managers first
hauled Atlantis off its Pad 39B launch site to avoid high winds and severe
weather from Tropical Storm Ernesto, then rolled the shuttle back
to the pad as the tempest weakened.
Ernesto made landfall in southern Florida early Wednesday, and has
weakened into a tropical depression, according to the National Hurricane Center.
A ride-out crew of about 200 NASA workers arrived at the Florida spaceport at about 4:00 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT) to watch over the site while Ernesto
passes, NASA KSC spokesperson George Diller said in an update. Ernesto's center
is expected to pass close to KSC, with the entire storm to blow by midnight, he
added.
Peak winds at Atlantis' launch pad are expected to reach 55 knots, well
below the 70 knot cap for a shuttle at Pad 39B, Diller said. Sustained winds
are expected to reach between 40-45 knots, with some locations expected between
six and eight inches of rain while others prepare for rainfall of three to four
inches.
"KSC could be in a position for employees to return to work on
Thursday," Diller said, adding that the decision to reopen the center depends
on the result of post-storm safety inspections.
Shuttle officials have agreed to restart Atlantis' launch countdown from
scratch, picking the count up at T minus three days. To make an initial Sept. 6
attempt, the countdown would have to resume Sunday to preserve at least three
opportunities to launch Atlantis.
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