NASA's
space shuttle Atlantis will have to wait a few more days before leaving its
Florida spaceport hangar in order to avoid severe weather expected from
Tropical Storm Fay.
The shuttle
was slated to make the short trek from its service hangar to NASA's cavernous
Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on
Monday, but mission managers opted to wait until Fay passed before moving the
100-ton spacecraft into position to receive its fuel tank and twin solid rocket
boosters.
"It's safer
right now to leave it in the [Orbiter Processing Facility]," NASA spokesperson
Candrea Thomas told SPACE.com. "We want to make sure everything is safe."
Thomas said
the main concerns included high winds and rain associated with Fay, which was
moving northeast toward the southwestern coast of Florida at about 14 mph (23
kph) with sustained maximum winds nearing speeds of 60 mph (95 kph), according
to the National Hurricane Center.
Atlantis
will likely not make the move to the Vehicle Assembly Building until about
midday Thursday, but the delay should not impact the shuttle's planned
Oct. 8 launch toward the Hubble Space Telescope, Thomas said.
"Right now,
there's no impact on the targeted launch date," she added.
Commanded
by veteran spaceflyer Scott Altman, Atlantis'
STS-125 astronauts are preparing to fly the fifth and final servicing
mission to Hubble. During their planned
11-day mission, the seven-astronaut crew is expected to perform five
back-to-back spacewalks to replace gyroscopes, make unprecedented repairs and
install new instruments to make the now 18-year-old space telescope more
powerful than ever.
It should
take shuttle workers about two days to move Atlantis into NASA's 52-story Vehicle
Assembly Building, hoist it into a vertical position and attach the orbiter to
its external tank and rocket boosters, Thomas said. The shuttle is slated to
roll out to its Pad 39A launch site sometime next week.
Atlantis'
STS-125 flight will mark NASA's fourth shuttle mission of up to five planned for
this year. The upcoming spaceflight is also the only one of the space agency's 10
remaining shuttle missions not aimed at completing construction of the International
Space Station before the orbiter fleet is retired in 2010.
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