NASA to Try Again to Land Space Shuttle

By MIKE SCHNEIDER

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA planned another attempt to return the space shuttle to Earth on Friday after bad weather in Florida a day earlier kept Atlantis’ seven astronauts in space an extra 24 hours.

Besides Kennedy Space Center in Florida, mission managers had an additional landing site to choose from: Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The shuttle has five chances Friday to land, the first at 2:18 p.m. EDT in Florida and the last at 6:59 p.m. EDT in California. If the weather spoils all those opportunities, mission managers would activate another backup landing site in New Mexico and try for Saturday.

The low clouds and showers that prevented Atlantis from landing at Kennedy on Thursday were expected to stick around Friday, and high winds were predicted as the day progressed at Edwards.

Atlantis has enough power for its systems to orbit until Sunday, but managers want the shuttle to land by Saturday. The flight would be extended to Sunday only if there were technical problems that needed to be fixed.

NASA managers prefer landing at Kennedy, which would make it easier and cheaper to prepare Atlantis for its next mission in December. It would cost $1.7 million and take up to 10 days to bring the shuttle back to Florida from California aboard a jumbo jet.

During Atlantis’ two chances to land Thursday, showers were within 34 miles of the landing strip at Kennedy Space Center, and clouds hung below an altitude of 8,000 feet, both violations of flight rules.

"We looked as hard and long as we think is reasonable and the rain showers and (cloud) ceilings are going to keep us from making it into Florida today," Mission Control told Atlantis’ seven astronauts.

During the crew’s 14-day mission to the international space station, the astronauts installed a new truss segment, unfurled a new pair of power-generating solar arrays and activated a rotating joint that allows the new solar arrays to track the sun.

Originally scheduled for 11 days, the mission was extended by two days to give astronauts time to repair a thermal blanket that had peeled up during the June 8 launch. Astronaut Danny Olivas stapled it back into place during a spacewalk last week. An extra day in orbit was added after the weather in Florida prevented a landing Thursday.

The shuttle’s visit to the space station was complicated by the crash of Russian computers that control orientation and oxygen production.

Atlantis helped the station maintain its orientation until the computers were revived several days later when cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov used a cable to bypass a circuit board. Astronauts conserved the shuttle’s power in case they needed to spend an extra day at the station.

The cosmonauts at the space station on Thursday attempted to power the Russian computers without using the cable bypass, but it was unsuccessful.

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Associated Press writer Juan Lozano contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

Shuttle: http://www.nasa.gov/mission-pages/shuttle/main/index.html