NASA
postponed a cross-country trip home from California for the space shuttle
Atlantis to no earlier than Monday due to bad weather.
Atlantis
landed in California on May 24 after foul weather thwarted repeated attempts to
return to its home port at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.,
following a successful
mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.
Thunderstorms
and high winds prevented plans to begin flying Atlantis back home early Sunday
from the backup landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. The
$1.8 million ferry flight is now slated to begin Monday at 8:20 a.m. EDT (1220
GMT), though it should be just before sunrise local time in California.
NASA will
return Atlantis to Florida atop one of its two modified Boeing 747 jumbo jets,
which have been converted to allow a 100-ton shuttle to ride piggyback for the
trip home.
The flight
is extremely weather dependent, since carrier craft cannot fly through rain,
turbulence or extreme cold in order to avoid damaging the thousands of heat
resistant tiles lining the shuttle's belly. The ferry flights typically make
stopovers at military airbases while awaiting favorable weather, and can fly as
low as 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) to seek out good conditions.
"Flight
managers are looking at various options for the best route to the Kennedy Space
Center," NASA officials said in an update. "Weather remains very dynamic."
Atlantis is
returning to Florida after a 13-day flight that marked the fifth and final
service call on the 19-year-old Hubble Space Telescope. While shuttle
technicians prepared the spacecraft for its trip home, Atlantis' sister ship moved
into position for its planned June launch toward the International
Space Station on Sunday.
Endeavour
is slated to launch a crew of seven astronauts to the station on June 13 to
deliver the last piece of outpost's massive Japanese Kibo lab. Five spacewalks
are planned during the 16-day mission.
advertisement
