This story was updated at 9:17 a.m.
EDT.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Bad weather
thwarted the planned landing of the shuttle Atlantis for the second time in as
many days Saturday, keeping its seven-astronaut crew in space for yet another
extra day.
Atlantis was slated to land on a
runway here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at 9:16 a.m. EDT (1316 GMT) to
end a 12-day trek to fix up the Hubble
Space Telescope. But persistent thunderstorms prevented the shuttle's
return just as they did on Friday. The astronauts will try again on Sunday to
conclude a now 13-day mission.
"The weather at KSC has not
cooperated with us today," Mission Control radioed the Atlantis crew. "We are
waving off for the day."
Led by veteran commander Scott
Altman, the shuttle's seven-astronaut
crew had already circled the Earth for awhile to wait out the weather until
their second landing attempt also slipped away.
"There was just no hope that it was
going to get any better," said John Madura, head of the spaceport's weather
office.
The next chance to land Atlantis in
Florida comes Sunday morning at 10:11 a.m. EDT (1411 GMT), with a second chance
at 11:40 a.m. EDT (1540 GMT) on a backup runway at the Edwards Air Force Base
in Southern California. Atlantis has enough supplies to stay in space through
Monday before its oxygen supplies run out, mission managers have said.
Madura told SPACE.com that
the weather forecast for Florida Sunday remains bleak. Severe thunderstorms
from a low pressure front have battered the spaceport and surrounding area for
days, though conditions will improve slightly tomorrow. Good landing conditions
are expected in California through Monday.
But any chance to land in Florida is
a welcome one for NASA, Madura said. The agency prefers to land shuttles at
their home port here because it saves about a week of time and the $1.8 million
required for transporting orbiters back from California atop a modified jumbo
jet carrier.
NASA's flight rules forbid
attempting to land a space shuttle on a runway shrouded by low clouds or with
rain storms within 30 miles (48 km). Space shuttles cannot fly through rain
because the moisture can damage the thousands of protective heat shield tiles
lining their bellies.
Returning home aboard Atlantis with
Altman will be shuttle pilot Greg H. Johnson and mission specialists Michael
Good, Megan McArthur, John Grunsfeld, Michael Massimino and Andrew Feustel.
During five back-to-back spacewalks,
Atlantis astronauts installed new
instruments, replaced old parts and repaired Hubble's long-dead main camera
and spectrograph - two instruments that were never designed to be fixed
in space. The space telescope is now more powerful than at any time since
its 1990 launch, mission managers said.
Hubble scientists said the
astronauts' repairs and upgrades to the 19-year-old space telescope have extended
its life through at least 2014, if not longer. Spacewalking astronauts also
attached a docking ring to Hubble that will allow a robotic spacecraft to grab
onto the space telescope sometime after 2020, when its mission ends, and send
it plunging into the Pacific Ocean.
The mission is NASA's fifth and
final flight to Hubble before the agency retires its shuttle fleet in 2010. The
replacement, NASA's Orion crew capsule, will be used to ferry astronaut to the
International Space Station and, ultimately, back to the moon.
NASA initially canceled the mission
because of its risk a year after the 2003 Columbia disaster, but reinstated in
2006 after successfully resuming shuttle flights and testing heat shield repair
and inspection techniques. A second shuttle - Endeavour - was readied as
a rescue ship in case Atlantis suffered serious damage during the flight. No
rescue was required, and the astronauts successfully repaired Hubble.
In all, their mission cost about
$1.1 billion, a fraction of the $10 billion invested in Hubble since its
inception and launch.
SPACE.com is providing continuous
coverage of NASA's last mission to the Hubble Space Telescope with senior
editor Tariq Malik in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and reporter Clara Moskowitz in New
York. Click here for
landing coverage, mission updates and SPACE.com's live NASA TV video
feed.
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