The shuttle Atlantis prepared for a new landing attempt yesterday at Florida's Cape Canaveral after bad weather forced it to stay aloft an extra day.
The shuttle had two windows of opportunity to return to Earth on Thursday, but rain and low clouds scuttled both attempts to land at the Kennedy Space Center.
"The rain shower and the [cloud] ceiling are going to keep us from making it in Florida today," a flight controller said from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Clouds below 2,400m block the pilot's vision as the shuttle aims for the landing strip without power, which pilots call a "dead stick" landing.
The shuttle plummets earthward 20 times faster than a commercial airliner, but unlike a jet, the pilot gets only one try for lack of power.
In all, the crew was to have five attempts to land yesterday: two in Florida, at 6:18pm GMT and 7:55pm GMT, and three at the Edwards Air Force Base in California, at 7:49pm GMT, 9:23pm GMT and 10:59pm GMT.
The shuttle could only have a small window of opportunity to land today with weather conditions set to worsen in Florida and also late yesterday in California.
NASA wants to land Atlantis by today as the shuttle's hydrogen batteries providing its electric power would have just one more day of life.
NASA prefers to land the shuttle in Florida as it costs nearly US$2 million to return it from California piggybacked atop a Boeing 747, and this would affect the schedule of future missions.
On Thursday the shuttle's cargo doors were closed in preparation for its descent from orbit, 13 days after blasting off on a mission to install new solar panels on the International Space Station (ISS).
Atlantis commander Rick Sturckow and pilot Lee Archambault waited for the green light to fire thrusters to slow down the orbiter, which reaches speeds of more than 26,000kph.
Atlantis undocked from the ISS on Tuesday after astronauts successfully installed a new 16-tonne truss segment expanding the orbiting laboratory with a new set of power-generating solar arrays that will track the sun.
The astronauts ventured out of the ISS on four spacewalks to install the new truss and fix a thermal blanket protecting the shuttle.
The mission was also marked by the unprecedented crash of Russian computers controlling the space station's orientation in orbit. The computers were fixed and passed a key test this week.
Atlantis, which launched on June 8, also brought a new crew member for the ISS, US astronaut Clayton Anderson, who joined two Russian cosmonauts and will stay aboard the orbiting research lab for four months.
Anderson replaced US colleague Sunita Williams, who set the record for the longest uninterrupted space flight by a woman, surpassing the 188-day and four-hour mark set by her compatriot Shannon Lucid in 1996.
NASA plans to launch at least 12 more shuttle missions, including three this year, as it races to finish building the US$100 billion ISS by 2010, when the US space agency retires its three remaining orbiters.
NASA considers the station a vital part of US ambitions to send a manned mission to Mars.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS