Weather Delays Shuttle Landing in Florida

Jun 21, 02:50 PM

Current Headlines: CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. _ Summer rain in Florida on the first day of summer _ who would have guessed?

Scattered showers and a thick layer of clouds compelled mission managers to wave off both opportunities Thursday to land shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center in Central Florida.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will try again Friday, adding a landing strip in California into the mix.

Hoping for the best, Mission Control awakened the crew Thursday with an appropriate recording of Makin' Good Time (Coming Home)'' by singer John Arthur Martinez, but they ended up losing time and won't be home until at least Friday.

"You know how this goes," Tony Antonelli, a NASA manager in Houston, told the seven astronauts aboard Atlantis. "It's never easy."

Atlantis and its crew can land Friday at the space center at 2:18 p.m. EDT or 3:54 p.m. If the weather at Kennedy doesn't cooperate, the shuttle can be diverted to Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert for attempts at 3:49 p.m., 5:24 p.m. and 6:59 p.m.

The weather at both sites could be marginal, but "we are going to try to land," Antonelli said.

The shuttle also could land Saturday or even Sunday, but must be down by the end of the weekend or risk running out of power. Its two-week mission took it to the International Space Station, where the crew delivered and installed new solar arrays.

NASA would prefer to land the shuttle in Florida, which saves the agency the $1 million cost of ferrying it from the West Coast and at least a week of processing time.

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