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Shuttle Endeavour Gets Bonus Day in Space, Tuesday Landing Now Planned
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer,
posted: 01:30 pm ET
17 June 2002
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- An American spaceflight record will grow by at least one more day thanks to bad weather at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida that prevented shuttle Endeavour from landing on Monday. | STS-111 |  For complete coverage of Endeavour's landing attempt on Tuesday just click here. |
With pessimistic weather forecasts for Tuesday in Florida and at the backup landing site in California, it may be Wednesday before the longest U.S. space mission ends. As members of the Expedition Four crew aboard the International Space Station, astronauts Dan Bursch and Carl Walz have been in space since December, having passed 194 days in orbit on Monday. They are returning to Earth on Endeavour. The old record was 188 days, set by Shannon Lucid in 1996 during her stay aboard the Russian space station Mir. Rain showers, thunderstorms and gusting winds at KSC remain a concern for Tuesday's landing opportunities, which are scheduled for 11:55 a.m. EDT (1556 GMT) and 1:31 p.m. EDT (1732 GMT).Across the nation at Edwards Air Force Base northeast of Los Angeles, high winds are forecast to get in the way of landing there, which is possible at 3:00 p.m. EDT (1902 GMT) and 4:36 p.m. EDT (2038 GMT). Mission managers would consider landing Endeavour at Edwards on Tuesday only if the weather forecast for landing on Wednesday looks bad at both sites, said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias. The space agency would like to avoid the increased risk, cost and schedule delays associated with having to ferry an orbiter from California to Florida. After seeing threatening clouds building and moving in over the Cape Canaveral area on Monday, flight controllers waved off both of Endeavour's landing opportunities in Florida. "Tell everybody waiting on the ground we're sorry and we'll try to see them tomorrow," said Endeavour commander Ken "Taco" Cockrell. "Copy, Taco. Yeah, we gave it a good college try today, but those thunderstorms are starting to encroach into that 30-mile circle," replied astronaut Bill Oefelein from Mission Control in Houston.
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