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.
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