HOUSTON -- NASA's
space shuttle Endeavour will land one day early to avoid the possible impacts
of Hurricane Dean, mission managers said Saturday.
Endeavour
is now set to land on Tuesday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida due to the
looming threat of Hurricane
Dean to NASA's shuttle and space station Mission Control centers here at
the Johnson Space Center (JSC).
"End
of mission day is now Tuesday," Cain told reporters here at JSC. "That's
our first landing day."
Endeavour's
seven STS-118 astronauts are now set to undock from the International Space
Station (ISS) at 7:57 a.m. EDT (1157 GMT) Sunday and land at 12:30 p.m. EDT
(1630 GMT) Tuesday in Florida.
Spacewalkers
Dave Williams and Clayton Anderson cut short a planned
6.5-hour spacewalk earlier Saturday to prepare for the earlier undocking
and landing, but not before the spaceflyers caught
sight of Hurricane Dean while working outside the ISS.
"Holy
smokes," Anderson told Williams. "Did you see the eye?"
As of late
Saturday, Hurricane Dean remained a strong category four storm with winds blowing
up to 150 miles per hour (240 kph) as it made its way west-northwest across the
Caribbean Sea, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm is
currently headed towards the Gulf Coast, with some forecasts predicting
landfall in southern Texas at its northernmost point.
Cain said
NASA's greatest concern is that Dean could force an evacuation of its Mission
Control centers just in time for Endeavour's previously planned Wednesday
landing.
"I
would defy just about anybody to tell me at this point that there is zero, or
even extremely low probability or possibility, that this storm is going to come
here," Cain said, adding that it's still too early to predict what Dean
will do. "We've all watched these storms before, we're all aware of what
they can and have done."
If Dean
threatens mission operations in Houston by about Monday, NASA will call up
backup landing sites at California's Edwards Air Force Base and New Mexico's
White Sands Space Harbor for a definite return to Earth Tuesday, Cain said.
But if the
storm does not force critical flight controllers to evacuate Mission Control,
and bad weather prevents a Florida landing on Tuesday, Endeavour could circle
Earth an extra day, he added.
NASA's
International Space Station (ISS) mission operations can shift to Russia's
Mission Control near Moscow during hurricanes, with a backup U.S. team set up
outside of Houston. The scenario was successfully implemented in September 2005
during Hurricane Rita.
For shuttle
flights, the agency can set up a backup Mission Control in a launch firing room
at the Kennedy Space Center, but the facilities are not as robust for landing
support as those in Houston.
Endeavour's
earlier landing day comes after NASA
cleared concerns over a small, but deep, gouge in the orbiter's
belly-mounted heat shield.
Commanded
by veteran shuttle flyer Scott Kelly, Endeavour's STS-118 crew delivered about
5,000 pounds (2,267 kilograms) of cargo, a new spare parts platform and a new
starboard side girder to the ISS. The crew also includes teacher-turned-astronaut
Barbara Morgan, who served as NASA's backup to Teacher in Space Christa
McAuliffe before the 1986 Challenger accident.
Hatches
between the two spacecraft were shut earlier today after a brief farewell
ceremony between the Endeavour astronauts and the station's Expedition 15 crew.
"We're
going to be here for about another two months," Expedition 15 commander
Fyodor Yurchikhin told the departing shuttle astronauts. "Come back
again!"
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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