Discovery landing postponed
2005-08-08 08:46
Cape Canaveral - Nasa postponed Monday's scheduled landing of Space Shuttle Discovery by 90 minutes to 06:22 (12:22 SA time) because of weather conditions.
Nasa officials said the decision was taken because of low cloud cover over the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
Officials now focused on preparations for a 06:22 landing, which would be the last opportunity for the spacecraft to touch down on Monday.
If weather conditions do not allow for a landing on Monday, Discovery has two more days to return to the Florida installation, or head to alternate sites either in California or New Mexico.
Preparing to land
After circling the Earth for 13 days, astronauts aboard space shuttle Discovery powered up their spacecraft early on Monday and awaited word from Mission Control to fire their braking rockets and head for home.
Discovery, the first shuttle to return to orbit since Columbia disintegrated while re-entering the Earth's atmosphere 2.5 years ago, was set to land at Florida's Kennedy Space Centre before dawn.
The accident was on many minds, but Flight Director LeRoy Cain said his focus would be on bringing Discovery home.
"There's a lot of things to think about," said 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."
Shortly after 01:00 EDT (0500GMT), the astronauts closed Discovery's payload bay doors, a key step in preparing the shuttle to land.
Good weather was forecast for what was to be a relatively uncommon, less-preferred landing in darkness. Of the previous 111 shuttle touchdowns, only 19 occurred at night time.
Onboard computers would guide the shuttle's dangerous, fiery descent until about five minutes before touchdown, when commander Eileen Collins and pilot Jim Kelly would begin manually controlling the 100-ton glider.
- AP