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NASA Cancels Fla. Landing for Discovery

Posted on: Tuesday, 9 August 2005, 06:00 CDT

SPACE CENTER, Houston - NASA canceled plans to land space shuttle Discovery in Florida on Tuesday because of stormy weather and told the astronauts to aim instead for a touchdown across the country, in California.

Unstable weather at Cape Canaveral prompted Mission Control's decision to send Discovery to the backup touchdown site at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, especially after small pockets of thunderstorms popped up close to the landing strip.

"How do you feel about a beautiful clear night with a breeze down the runway in the high desert of California?" Mission Control radioed.

"We are ready for whatever we need to do," replied commander Eileen Collins.

The shuttle's first opportunity to land at Edwards would be at 8:12 a.m. EDT.

The directions to redirect toward California came just minutes after controllers told Collins the weather seemed to be clearing in Florida and they hoped to get the crew to the Kennedy Space Center. Conditions then took a turn for the worse.

"All you have to do is look around and see the flashes of thunder and lightning. Obviously, Mother Nature doesn't want us to land at the cape today," said Bill Readdy, a former astronaut who heads NASA's spaceflight office.

Collins was understanding. She said her crew was familiar with Florida storms and was "not surprised at all."

"I've been in your shoes many times so I understand," Collins told Mission Control.

The crew changed into pressurized orange flight suits, helmets, gloves and boots worn during launch and landing. Each astronaut also strapped on a parachute pack, including a life raft, sea dye and two liters of emergency drinking water.

NASA instructed the astronauts to continue landing preparations and begin drinking large amounts of fluids, which are necessary to ease the transition from the weightless environment of space back to Earth's gravity.

"We sure hope we get our feet on the ground today," astronaut Wendy Lawrence radioed after Mission Control roused the astronauts late Monday with the Beatles song "Good Day Sunshine."

Controllers said the song was appropriate after the crew had to abandon two attempts to return Monday when clouds obscured the runway at the Kennedy Space Center.

The space center had been NASA's first choice for an early morning touchdown because the agency prefers landing shuttles at the same place where it launches them, to avoid the several days and estimated $1 million needed to ferry the spacecraft back from the West Coast atop a modified jumbo jet.

The detour to the opposite coast was a big disappointment for the astronauts' families, who had been waiting to greet their loved ones in Cape Canaveral. Their reunion was put on hold until Wednesday, when they all planned to meet in Houston.

NASA's top officials also had gathered at Cape Canaveral to welcome the crew home.

"There's nothing more that I would love to see than it (the landing) here so everybody here could be a part of this. But it's not going to be," shuttle program manager Bill Parsons said. "I want it to be safe, wherever the safest place is to go."

Discovery has enough fuel and supplies to stay in orbit until Wednesday, but NASA wants to hold out that option only if a technical problem arises.

Discovery is the first shuttle to return to orbit since Columbia's catastrophic re-entry in 2003. But Discovery's launch and flight to the international space station could be the last for a long while.

NASA grounded the shuttle fleet after a nearly 1-pound chunk of insulating foam broke off Discovery's external fuel tank during its July 26 liftoff - the very thing that doomed Columbia and was supposed to have been corrected.

Discovery spent nine days hitched to the space station, where astronauts resupplied the orbiting lab and removed broken equipment and trash - one of the main goals of the mission.

Another day was added to the mission when NASA grounded its fleet so astronauts could do additional work on the station. Discovery was the first shuttle to visit the orbiting outpost since 2002.

As a result of Columbia, Discovery's crew performed intense inspections of their ship on five different days. Astronauts also did a spacewalk to test new repair techniques and replaced a failed gyroscope on the station during another spacewalk.

In a third, unprecedented spacewalk, two protruding thermal tile fillers were removed from Discovery's belly. Engineers feared the material could cause dangerous overheating during re-entry.

Columbia was doomed by a 1.67-pound piece of foam that broke free from an external fuel tank at launch. The foam pierced a hole in the ship's left wing, and as the spacecraft re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, searing gases melted the wing from the inside. All seven astronauts aboard were killed.

Former shuttle astronaut Charles Bolden said there comes a time when every astronaut is ready to return home - no matter how risky the ride.

"You always want to stay in space. You don't ever want to come home, but you invariably get homesick," he said. "With every orbit that you don't come home, it gets more and more frustrating."

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On the Net:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/main/index.html

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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