This
story was updated at 10:40 a.m. EDT.
CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. - Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis are headed home
to land on a backup runway in California after bad weather thwarted earlier
attempts to land in Florida.
The
astronauts are now set land at 11:39 a.m. EDT (1539 GMT) at the Edwards Air
Force Base in California to end a 13-day mission that gave the iconic Hubble
Space Telescope one last
service call. Rain showers within 30 miles of the shuttle's landing strip
here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center prevented landing attempts earlier today,
as well as on Friday and Saturday.
After
clinging to hope the weather would improve in Florida, entry flight director
ultimately opted to send Atlantis in California, where conditions are clear for
a shuttle landing.
"The
Edwards weather is great," Mission Control radioed the Atlantis astronauts,
adding that they should have clear skies and good communications all the home.
"Copy that,"
Atlantis commander Scott Altman replied. "A beautiful day in the desert."
Atlantis
fired its twin rocket engines at about 10:24 a.m. EDT (1424 GMT) to begin the
descent back to Earth.
Altman
and his crewafter overhauling the Hubble Space Telescope for the last time. The shuttle launched
toward the 19-year-old space telescope on May 11.
Set to
return to Earth with Altman are shuttle pilot Greg C. Johnson and mission
specialists Michael Good, Megan McArthur, John Grunsfeld, Michael Massimino and
Andrew Feustel.
During five
back-to-back spacewalks, Atlantis astronauts installed two powerful new
instruments, replaced aging gyroscopes and batteries, and repaired a pair of
long-broken instruments that were never designed to be fixed in space.
The orbital
work is expected to extend Hubble's
cosmic vision and life for at least five or 10 years. The astronauts also
installed a docking ring on Hubble that will allow a robotic spacecraft to
latch on sometime after 2020 and sent it plunging into the Pacific Ocean to end
its mission.
The mission
is NASA's fifth and final flight
to Hubble and cost about $1.1 billion. In all, about $10 billion has been
invested in Hubble since its inception.
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.
Live coverage begins at 6:30 a.m. EDT.
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