Shuttle Landing Delayed
Jefferson Morris jeff_morris@AviationWeek.com
Weather issues have prompted a decision to delay the shuttle landing at least one day. More coverage will follow; below is the story we filed Thursday night.
A low pressure system in Florida is making a Friday landing of Shuttle Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) appear somewhat unlikely, although the orbiter itself is clean and ready.
"I'll tell you, it doesn't look great," STS-125 Entry Flight Director Norm Knight said of the weather during a press conference at Johnson Space Center in Houston Thursday afternoon. "We're waiting for that system to move out. We expect it's going to improve over the next couple of days, but again, it's just a matter of waiting and seeing."
The crew of Atlantis is gearing up to return home after their successful final servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope. With the help of a power-down period Wednesday, the shuttle should be able to comfortably remain in orbit until Monday if need be.
NASA is only considering a KSC landing on Friday, with opportunities at 10 a.m. and 11:39 a.m. EDT. If weather prevents a return to KSC that day, the backup landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California will be activated as well on Saturday. For now, the weather at Edwards is "just great," Knight said.
Late inspections of the orbiter's thermal protection system revealed no damage that would preclude a safe re-entry, and shuttle managers have no concerns about a short in a quadruple-redundant actuator control system that occurred during liftoff from KSC.
As Atlantis climbed to orbit May 11, Aerosurface Actuator 1 (ASA 1) shorted out, which cut off one of four channels controlling aerodynamic surfaces on the shuttle, including the elevons, body flap and rudder.
The ASA box is located in an avionics bay in the shuttle's aft compartment. The four ASAs receive signals from the shuttle's general purpose computers and translate them for the actuators. The rest of the system has been fully checked out and there are "no issues" for landing, Knight said.
The original headline on this story read: Weather Casts Doubt On Friday Shuttle Landing
File photo of STS-122 landing: NASA
