14 DAY TRIAL // The seven-astronaut crew aboard the space shuttle Atlantis was told by Mission Control that it would have to spend a little more time in space, on account of the fact that the weather around the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, didn't look great. STS-125 Entry Flight Director Norm Knight announced that there was a blanket of broken clouds at approximately 4,000 feet, and that a thunderstorm might take place less than 30 nautical miles off the coast of the Cape Canaveral complex. Under these conditions, the official added, the weather would be closely monitored for any landing windows in the next hours.
Originally scheduled to touch down at 10.00 am EDT (1400 GMT), the craft will be forced to spend additional hours, or even one or two extra days in space, until the weather lets up. For Friday morning, NASA explained, another landing window existed at 11.39 am EDT (1539 GMT), but the weather forecast showed that this too could be compromised. Additionally, rain showers could also affect Florida's coast throughout the day, so it's uncertain if Atlantis will land today altogether.
Fortunately, NASA's Mission Control asked the shuttle astronauts to prepare for such a scenario. Starting yesterday, the crew members turned down auxiliary systems, which were not required for the standard atmospheric reentry and landing procedure. The move was aimed at conserving as much power as possible for the spacecraft, in the very event of bad weather forecast. According to data supplied by the American space agency, Atlantis could last until Monday in orbit.
“The weather for KSC on Friday, I'll tell ya, doesn't look great. We expect it's going to improve over the next couple of days, but again we'll just have to wait and see,” Space quotes Knight as saying yesterday. He added that the spacecraft had another landing window on Saturday, and that Commander Scott Altman had the possibility to choose between the KSC landing, and guiding Atlantis to a back-up runway, at Edwards Air Force Base, in Southern California.
“There were folks who thought we couldn't do this. They always told us 'you're too aggressive, you're going to get in trouble.' I don't want to tell you I told you so, but I told you so,” NASA Lead Flight Director Tony Ceccacci shared. “Everything worked, we deployed Hubble and it's at the apex of its capabilities. We pulled it all off. It was a very hard mission,” Astronaut John Grunsfeld added about the fifth and final Hubble repair mission. The five-time spacewalker told that this had been the most complex mission ever carried out in space.