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Bad Weather in Spain Scrubs Endeavour Launch
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer, Cape Canaveral Bureau
posted: 08:45 pm ET
22 November 2002
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA was forced to scrub Friday night's launch attempt of shuttle Endeavour because of bad weather overseas at a pair of emergency Trans Atlantic Landing (TAL) sites in Spain."Unfortunately we didn't get their with TAL weather tonight," Kennedy Space Center launch director Mike Leinbach radioed Endeavour commander Jim Wetherbee just as Friday's launch window opened. "We did have a good vehicle ready for you, and good local weather. But we need a TAL site in case we got into that situation, so we're going to declare a scrub this time and come back tomorrow night and try again," Leinbach said. "OK, thanks for trying and we'll try again tomorrow," Wetherbee said. The preferred launch time on Saturday is 7:49:47 p.m. EST (0049.47 GMT Sunday). Weather at the KSC is forecast to be nearly ideal, with a 95 percent chance of acceptable conditions during the 10-minute launch window that officially opens at 7:44:48 p.m. EST (0044.48 GMT Sunday). However, the poor conditions at Moron and Zaragoza in Spain are forecast to remain marginal at best. The TAL abort sites are necessary in case one of the shuttle's three Rocketdyne main engines shuts down during the climb to orbit. Depending on when the engine fails a shuttle can attempt to return to the launch site, arc across the Atlantic and land in Spain, limp into a lower-than-intended orbit or even loop around the planet to land in California, New Mexico or Florida.Once off the ground Endeavour is to fly an 11-day mission to the International Space Station to deliver a new truss segment to the outpost and swap the Expedition Six crew for the Expedition Five crew that has been in space since June. A Nov. 11 launch attempt was scrubbed when an oxygen flex hose line began leaking. In the attempt to fix that problem the shuttle's robot arm was damaged. NASA managers were able to disposition both problems late Wednesday and approve Friday's launch attempt.
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