The landing of the beleaguered Discovery space shuttle has been delayed due to low clouds over Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre, Nasa announced this morning.
The seven astronauts were originally preparing to land on Monday morning, but the bad weather put the landing back to later in the day. If the crew were to miss the second opportunity to land the shuttle, Nasa said it could decide to delay the landing until Tuesday.
If the low cloud does delay the landing until Tuesday, two alternative landing sites are also being considered by flight controllers.
”The one word that describes the situation is unstable,” said astronaut Ken Ham, who contacted the shuttle astronauts from mission control in Houston to tell them of the delay.
The Discovery crew woke this morning to the Dexy’s Midnight Runners hit Come on Eileen, in tribute to Commander Eileen Collins.
The shuttle will be the first to attempt landing since the Columbia broke apart on re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere two and half years ago.
”There’s a lot of things to think about,” said flight director LeRoy Cain, who was also director for Columbia‘s fatal flight on February 1 2003. ”There’s a lot of things to worry about, and that’s what I get paid to do is to worry — and I do it a lot.”
Columbia disintegrated minutes before landing, killing all seven astronauts on board. Nasa insists it is not deeply concerned about the dangerous re-entry, even though Discovery‘s 13-day mission has been fraught with problems.
Tensions have run high ever since take-off, when a piece of insulating foam broke off the external fuel tank.
Unlike Columbia, which was doomed by a similar problem, Discovery narrowly missed being hit by the large chunk of foam.
However, the wing sensors and extensive video coverage clearly showed material hanging from the shuttle’s underside, and Nasa ordered a space walk in an effort to avoid a similar catastrophe.
Astronaut Stephen Robinson made the first-ever orbital repair, gently pulling two strips of thermal tile ”grout” away from the shuttle’s heat shield.
The effort was a hailed a success, but that did not stop Nasa grounding its fleet until the problem is resolved.
The space agency is confident that all should go according to plan this morning as Discovery is guided toward the Kennedy Space Centre.
Commander Collins admitted that the Columbia was on her mind but said all thoughts would be focussed solely on landing safely.
”We’re all going to be very focussed on the job at hand,” she said. ”It’s time to come home and keep working on getting the shuttle better and ready to fly in the future.”
Her co-pilot, James Kelly, said he did not have any concerns about re-entry and noted that never before have astronauts or flight controllers known so much about the condition of a returning shuttle.
”I guess you almost have to thank the Columbia crew,” he said. ”The sacrifices they made allowed us to get a lot smarter about it, get a lot of tools on board that we could use to look at the vehicle.”
The Discovery‘s seven-man crew achieved its goals of refilling the International Space Station with much-needed supplies, carrying out repairs and unloading some two years’ worth of rubbish.
It left the station in the early hours of Saturday morning, photographing the outpost before making final preparations to head home.
In the final hours before landing, the shuttle will slow down from around 28 000kph to 320kph. It will take around 90 minutes to orbit the Earth as two engines are fired off to slow it down.
Onboard computers will guide the shuttle’s descent until about five minutes before touchdown, when Commander Collins and pilot Jim Kelly will begin manually controlling the 100-tonne glider.
A Nasa spokesperson said: ”We are no more concerned than we ever would be about this landing. If anything we are more confident than ever given the thorough inspections to the heat shield.” – Guardian Unlimited Â