Bad weather delays shuttle landing to Friday
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA postponed shuttle Discovery's homecoming until Friday due to bad weather at the Florida landing site, officials said on Thursday.
Flight directors tried twice to bring Discovery home from it's 13-day mission to resupply the International Space Station, but were deterred by rain showers and brisk winds at the Kennedy Space Center.
"Mother Nature had the upper hand today," NASA commentator Rob Navias said.
Touchdown was rescheduled for Friday at 5:48 p.m. EDT (2148 GMT), with a backup landing opportunity at 7:23 p.m. (2323 GMT). NASA also will open its backup landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Earlier on Thursday, the shuttle crew had to alter their ship's orbit to steer clear of a piece of space debris.
NASA did not know what the space junk was, except that it likely came from the shuttle or the space station on Saturday during the last of the Discovery crew's three spacewalks.
"Exactly what (the debris) is not known, but it's been moving toward the orbiter so it is a concern," said NASA spokesman Pat Ryan.
During Discovery's nine-day stay at the station, two other pieces of orbital debris sent engineers scrambling to prepare avoidance maneuvers, which were later determined to be unnecessary.
Those pieces of space junk were identified as part of a spent upper-stage European rocket motor and a fragment from an obsolete weather satellite China destroyed in January 2007 during a widely condemned weapons test.
Discovery blasted off a minute before midnight on August 28 with more than 7.5 tons of food, laboratory equipment, science experiments, spare parts and a new treadmill and crew quarters for the space station. The station is a $100 billion project of 16 nations, which is nearing completion after more than a decade of construction.
As Discovery prepared to return to Earth, a Japanese cargo ship lifted off on a debut flight to the International Space Station.
The H-2 Transfer Vehicle, known as HTV, blasted off from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan at 1:01 p.m. EDT (1703 GMT) aboard an H-2B rocket, also making its maiden flight.
The launch, which was televised by NASA, marks a major milestone for Japan's aerospace industry and a key resource for the space station program, which will soon lose the enormous cargo capacity of the U.S. space shuttles. The shuttle fleet is being retired due to safety concerns and high operating expenses after six more missions to the space station.
"We are so proud of taking this new responsibility to provide cargo transportation capability to ISS program," said Masazumi Miyake, a project manager with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. "JAXA is now entering a new era."
The $680 million HTV, which is expected to reach the station on September 17, is loaded with more than 3 tons of food, equipment, supplies and experiments, including two Earth-monitoring devices that will help track climate change.
(Editing by Jane Sutton)
Source: Reuters
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