The shuttle that was to arrive at Kennedy’s space centre on early (7:33 EDT) Monday via parts of Pacific Ocean and North America will have try for a landing for the second time as its first landing was marred by bad weather. Both landing opportunities were lost on Monday to the weather.
Rain and clouds over the Florida played spoilsport and made NASA officials change their plans about its homecoming.
The next attempt for the save landing of the shuttle will be undertaken early morning after sunrise on Tuesday. This development made Discovery orbit around an extra day. Discovery has enough supplies to last it in orbit till Wednesday. Florida is chosen as the landing destination over California to save time and money on bringing the shuttle again over to Florida for processing.
The seven astronauts are returning after wrapping up a 14-day mission to perform a range of maintenance tasks at the International Space Station. This also includes the successful delivery a container holding eight tons of cargo to the ISS last week. The cargo contained a new ammonia cooling system, science experiments, sleeping berths, a darkroom for Earth observations and astronomical studies from the Destiny laboratory.
The sky had cleared somewhat as the morning progressed on Monday, but some sporadic showers were seen. Mission Control who did not want to take any chances with the safety of the crew preferred calling everything off.
Good news comes in the form of better weather that is expected on Tuesday. If however clouds still hover above the Kennedy Space Center, NASA will vouch for a backup landing site in Edwards Air Force Base in California.
On the other hand the weather is not expected to affect NASA’s plans of moving the shuttle Atlantis to its launch pad on Monday night. The shuttle is awaiting a March 14th launch on its final mission.