CAPE CANAVERAL,
Fla. – Thanks to a heat wave, NASA shuttle officials
improved tomorrow's launch weather forecast for the space shuttle Endeavour by
10 percent.
The
heat wave, which forecasters are calling the "ring of fire," is pushing
out typical thunderstorm conditions here at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC),
prompting NASA's shuttle weather officer Kathy Winters to raise Endeavour's
chance of an on-time launch from 70 percent to 80 percent. Endeavour and its
seven-astronaut crew are set to
launch Wednesday at 6:36 p.m. (2236 GMT) on a construction flight to the
International Space Station.
"The
drier air that we've had in the area is causing us to have less thunderstorm
activity, less showers," Winters said in a Tuesday mission status briefing.
"The same thing that's causing the hot temperatures is the same thing
that's allowing us to have good weather for launch."
Meanwhile,
shuttle technicians finished the delicate procedure of loading the propellant
to feed Endeavour's fuel cells early this morning, which will provide on-board
power for the spacecraft.
Jeff
Spaulding, NASA's shuttle test director, said the shroud-like Rotating Service
Structure that shields Endeavour from weather at its Pad
39A launch pad is set to retract at 9:00 p.m. EDT (0100 Aug. 8 GMT) this
evening. The six-hour process of loading the shuttle's 15-story fuel tank with
its super-cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant is scheduled to
start at 8:11 a.m. EDT (1211 GMT) tomorrow morning.
As
the weather system pushes away the chance of thunderstorms on launch day,
astronauts continue preparing for their expected liftoff.
Commanded
by veteran astronaut Scott Kelly, Endeavour's STS-118 crew are gearing up for
an 11-to-14 day mission install a new starboard-side spacer segment on the
space station's backbone-like main truss. The astronauts also plan to deliver
fresh cargo, spare parts and experiments to the orbiting laboratory.
Teacher-turned-astronaut
Barbara Morgan, an STS-118 mission specialist, is set make her first
journey into space Wednesday as a member of Endeavour's crew. Her flight has
been 22 years in the waiting, as Morgan was Christa McAuliffe's backup during
NASA's Teacher in Space program, which ended shortly after the 1986
Challenger tragedy.
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