CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA will take another shot at launching the space shuttle
Discovery on Wednesday after unexpected thunderstorms foiled an attempted liftoff
earlier today.
Discovery
and its seven-astronaut crew are now slated to blast off at 1:10 a.m. EDT (0510
GMT) to begin a 13-day trek to the International Space Station. The astronauts were
already aboard the shuttle when NASA called
off their launch early this morning.
Thunderstorms,
rain and lightning were all concerns at different times during the attempted
launch.
"Bad luck,
but not too disappointed," said Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang, a
Discovery mission specialist, in a Twitter update. "Try again tomorrow!"
Fuglesang,
who represents the European Space Agency, has been posting Twitter updates in
English and Swedish under the moniker @CFuglesang during his mission training
to reach out to the Swedish public. Likewise, his fellow crewmate Jose
Hernandez of NASA is also "tweeting" in English and Spanish as @Astro_Jose. His
first post after the delayed launch was also optimistic for Wednesday's launch
chances.
Discovery
has a 70 percent chance of good weather at launch time Wednesday morning, as
well as for fueling later this afternoon, said Air Force Lt. Col. Patrick
Barrett of the 45th Weather Squadron that watches over shuttle flight weather
for NASA. Engineers plan to begin fueling Discovery's 15-story external tank at
about 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT).
"I think we're
still going to have similar challenges," Barrett told SPACE.com.
Discovery had
an encouraging 80 percent chance of good conditions before thunderstorms rolled
in to spoil Tuesday's launch attempt. Barrett told SPACE.com after the scrubbed
launch try that some of the same weather patterns that led up to the storm
delay today could arise for Wednesday's attempted liftoff.
Commanded
by veteran shuttle flyer Rick Sturckow, Discovery's six-man,
one-woman crew plans to deliver a cargo pod packed with new science gear
and supplies to the space station, as well as a new treadmill named after comedian
Stephen Colbert.
Colbert
tried to get a new space station room named after him earlier this year by
urging fans of his Comedy Central show "The Colbert Report" to vote for him in
an online NASA poll. NASA ultimately chose the name Tranquility, after first
moon base set up by astronauts during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, but dubbed
the space station's new treadmill after Colbert as a consolation prize.
The
treadmill is known as COLBERT for short, but its full NASA name is the Combined
Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill. NASA invited Colbert to
watch Discovery's launch but he was unable to attend. He did, however, send
NASA a video message that once more lamented his loss of the Tranquility module's
naming rights.
"You named
the node 'Tranquility.' Yeah, that'll scare the aliens. They're not going to
mess with Earth now! We might get all relaxed at them,'" Colbert said in the
video. "But I was still honored to receive the traditional NASA consolation
prize, a space treadmill."
Three
spacewalks are planned for Discovery's mission to replace
experiments outside the space station and replace a massive cooling system
tank that weighs as much as a small car.
Let to ride
to space aboard Discovery with Fuglesang and Hernandez are shuttle commander
Rick Sturckow, pilot Kevin Ford and mission specialists Patrick Forrester,
Danny Olivas and Nicole Stott. Stott will replace NASA astronaut Tim Kopra as
part of the space station's six-person crew. She is due to return to Earth in
November, while Kopra - who has lived aboard the space station for more than a
month - come home on Discovery.
NASA has until the end of August to launch Discovery before running into
potential space traffic conflicts with Japan's first unmanned cargo ship and a
Russian crew-carrying Soyuz spacecraft, both of which are due to launch toward
the station in September.
If
Discovery does not liftoff by Aug. 30, NASA may have to stand down to wait out
the September flights, delaying its own mission to Oct. 17, mission managers
have said.
SPACE.com
is providing complete coverage of Discovery's STS-128 mission to the
International Space Station with Managing Editor Tariq Malik in Cape Canaveral,
Fla. Click here for shuttle
mission updates and a link to NASA TV. Live launch coverage begins at 8 p.m. ET
(0000 Aug. 26 GMT).
advertisement
