This
story was updated at 8:08 p.m. EDT.
HOUSTON -- The
looming threat of Hurricane Dean could force NASA's shuttle Endeavour to land Tuesday,
one day earlier than planned, mission managers said Friday.
Endeavour
is currently slated to land Wednesday after a 14-day
construction mission to the International Space Station (ISS), but the approach
of Hurricane Dean has prompted concerns that affect NASA's Houston-based
shuttle and space station control centers here at the Johnson Space Center
(JSC).
"We'd
really like to protect an option to end the mission on Tuesday," said NASA
mission management chair LeRoy Cain late Friday.
Endeavour's
STS-118 crew is currently scheduled to land at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC)
in Cape Canaveral, Florida at 12:52 p.m. EDT (1652 GMT) Wednesday. NASA has two
landing opportunities at that site on Tuesday, beginning at 12:30 p.m. EDT
(1630 GMT) with the second window opening about 30 minutes later.
For a
Tuesday landing, Endeavour astronauts would have to undock from the ISS late
Sunday to complete their construction flight to the orbital laboratory.
Cain said
mission managers are also studying options to cut short a planned
Saturday spacewalk outside the ISS for Endeavour's STS-118 crew.
"It's
not ideal," shuttle commander Scott Kelly told reporters Friday of a
possible early return. "We could potentially undock the day after the
spacewalk and come home a day early."
Alternate
landing sites
Hurricane
Dean is currently in the Caribbean Sea on course for the Yucatan Peninsula,
with National Hurricane Center forecasts predicting its arrival in the Gulf of
Mexico on Wednesday -- when Endeavour is slated to land -- and potentially
impact the Texas coast.
"The
center will have to make a decision in the mid-Sunday to mid-Monday on whether
or not to close," Cain said of JSC. But the decision to land Endeavour
early would have to be made well before that, he added.
If NASA's
mission control operations are forced to close here at JSC, the space agency
would send about two dozen critical flight controllers to a backup Mission
Control site at KSC, Matt Abbott, NASA's lead shuttle flight director, told
reporters in an afternoon briefing.
Space
station flight controllers, too, are reviewing their procedures should the hurricane
force an evacuation of Houston and Mission Control. In September 2005, the NASA
closed
its ISS Mission Control during Hurricane Rita, transferring primary control
of the station to its Russian Federal Space Agency mission operations center near Moscow, with a backup team of U.S.
flight controllers primed outside Houston.
But NASA
hopes none of those contingencies will be required, since its Mission Control
centers in Houston are the best equipped to oversee spacecraft in Earth orbit.
"Our
objective is really to get the mission completed, first and foremost, from here
in Houston," Abbott said.
To prepare
for a possible Tuesday landing, Cain said mission managers are preparing to
call up two additional landing sites for Endeavour in the event of an early
return.
Support
teams are expected to ready NASA's backup shuttle landing sites at California's
Edwards Air Force Base and the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico for the
possibility of a Tuesday return for Endeavour, he added.
"It's
really important that we keep our options open as long as it's practical,"
Abbott said. "We've been watching this storm kind of brewing for a couple
of days and everyone has been aware that it's developing ... we need to be
prepared to respond."
NASA is
broadcasting Endeavour's STS-118 mission live on NASA TV. Click here for mission updates and
SPACE.com's NASA TV feed.
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