Will Launch After Storm Passes

If there is a dominant theme for the upcoming launch of the shuttle Atlantis, it might be that one must ALWAYS respect Mother Nature... as after a launch pad lightning strike last week and a looming hurricane bearing down on Cape Canaveral, NASA mission managers have decided to roll Atlantis back to the Vehicle Assembly Building in order to wait out the storm.

At their mission preflight briefing this morning, NASA manages determined to move ahead with rollback preparations, ensuring that Space Shuttle Atlantis would be safely back in the VAB before effects from Tropical Storm Ernesto would be felt at the Kennedy Space Center on Florida's east coast.

"We pretty much did what we said we were going to do," said Leroy Cain, mission management team chairman. "We got together this morning and talked about it and didn't see any significant change for the good."

"We'd like to get off the pad tomorrow morning if at all possible," said Launch Director Mike Leinbach. "Based on tomorrow afternoon's local weather, we'd much rather be back in the VAB earlier rather than later."

As Aero-News reported, NASA had postponed the launch of Atlantis from Sunday to Monday after the lightning strike... and then determined scientists needed yet another day to throughly inspected for any damage to the pad, or orbiter.

Prior to the rollback announcement, Atlantis was scheduled to launch Tuesday afternoon -- past the time NASA says it needs to begin rolling the shuttle back to the VAB, in order to beat the storm. Erring on the side of caution, NASA decided not to take the chance of stranding the shuttle on the launch pad, should a Tuesday launch had not gone off as planned.

Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters described the effects that the Kennedy Space Center could receive from Ernesto if the current track and strength holds, predicting tropical storm force winds Wednesday morning and hurricane force winds by 5:00 pm EDT.

NASA's launch window for Atlantis extends to September 13, but mission managers were hoping to launch by the 7th to avoid a conflict with a Russian Soyuz mission also bound for the International Space Station. Officials are now conferring with their Russian counteparts about the issue.

Once the storm passes, Atlantis would require eight days of launch preparations once it was returned to Launch Pad 39B -- putting the earliest possible launch attempt towards the end of the first full week in September.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/shuttle