Thunderstorms and high winds forced NASA to abandon its first two attempts to land the space shuttle Discovery, with the next bid for a high-speed descent to Earth set for sometime yesterday.
“We know everyone worked it as hard as they could,” shuttle commander Rick Sturckow told mission control on Thursday when informed of the decision. “We will look forward to trying again tomorrow.”
Fresh bids to bring Discovery home were penciled in, but with stormy conditions again forecast for Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, Edwards Air Force Base in California was ready to become an alternative landing site if required, the US space agency said.
NASA said it had four landing opportunities yesterday, the first two — 9:48pm GMT and 11:23pm GMT — in Florida and two more later in California, at 0:53am GMT and 2:28am GMT today.
Favorable conditions at Edwards last night local time were forecast to worsen because of winds kicked up by Hurricane Linda in the Pacific Ocean. The shuttle is equipped with enough provisions to remain in orbit through tomorrow.
Earlier on Thursday, the crew fired up Discovery’s engines and carried out a 14-second evasive maneuver to prevent the shuttle from hitting a piece of debris that had apparently drifted away from the shuttle during a spacewalk last Saturday, mission control said.
When all was clear, shuttle commander Sturckow and his crew were given the green light to close the doors on Discovery’s big cargo bay and begin other preparations for the planned descent.
Discovery’s return marks the end of a successful mission to the International Space Station during which the crew installed new scientific equipment, overhauled the orbiter’s cooling system and gathered up external experiments to be returned to Earth for analysis.
Discovery returns to Earth with US astronaut Tim Kopra, who is ending a 57-day mission to the space station, and just more than 2.3 tonnes of research gear, discarded equipment and trash.
A half-dozen shuttle missions remain, each intended to gradually complete the assembly of the 15-nation outpost.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person