CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The Atlantis astronauts will make another attempt to return to Kennedy Space Center late Tuesday after rainstorms forced the shuttle crew to forego two after-hours landing opportunities earlier in the day.
The four-man, one-woman crew now is scheduled to touch down at NASA's coastal Florida spaceport at 11:39 p.m. EDT Tuesday (0339 GMT Wednesday). The astronauts will have a second opportunity to land here at 1:15 a.m. EDT (0515 GMT) Wednesday.
Now circling high above Earth, the astronauts were ordered to remain in space an extra day after a cluster of scattered showers rained on plans to close out a successful mission to outfit the International Space Station with a new portal for spacewalkers.
"We're going to go ahead and stand down and try again (Tuesday night)," astronaut Gus Loria told the Atlantis crew from NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston.
"We copy" was the stoic reply from shuttle skipper Steve Lindsey.
The weather in Central Florida, meanwhile, is expected to improve.
Showers and isolated thunderstorms that have been sweeping through the area the past three days are expected to move north by Tuesday night, clearing the way for landing.
NASA mission managers, consequently, have decided not to open up a back-up runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The site was not called up to support an early Tuesday landing either.
The reason: Atlantis has enough food, fuel and electrical power to remain in space until late Thursday or early Friday, and NASA prefers to land at KSC to avoid the $1 million cost of ferrying a shuttle back to Florida from California.
The astronauts had been scheduled to land at 12:37 a.m. EDT (0447 GMT) but were forced to pass up the opportunity when a band of rainstorms approached the Cape Canaveral area from the southwest. NASA mission managers were concerned that the storms might reach the space center about the same time as Atlantis.
Lindsey and his crew then lapped the planet in hopes that the weather would clear up for a second and final landing opportunity at 2:14 a.m. EDT (0614 GMT). But cloud cover built up and rain was falling at KSC when mission managers decided to call it a night.
NASA flight rules call for a shuttle landing to be waived off if rain creeps within 34.5 statute miles (55.2 kilometers) of the runway here at KSC.
Launched July 12, the Atlantis astronauts docked at the international station two days later and then carried out a week of construction work aimed at installing, activating and inaugurating a new $164 million airlock.
Dubbed Quest, the two-room pressure chamber will enable station crews to carry out their own spacewalking assembly or repair work in the absence of a visiting shuttle.
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