Shuttle Delayed Due to Cloudy Skies

PunkOfLinux writes "The shuttle won't be coming down until Tuesday, due to a decision by NASA that the weather was not good enough for re-entry. After the first two attempts, at around 4:45 and 6:25 this morning, NASA called off today's landing."

Re:Level of care

[tadmas]

Are they being ultra-careful with this, or is this just normal-careful?

I think they're being ultra-careful. From what I've heard, they would normally land in these conditions.

However, they really don't want to take a chance. Imagine if something did go wrong: the public outcry would be so big that it would virtually mean the end of manned space flight for a very long time, and that's not something NASA wants to risk.

Re:Level of care

[Anonymous Coward]

The landing conditions are within NASA safety range - but they aren't great. On earlier missions they most likely would have scrubbed the first landing attempt as well. This is routine and has happened many times before.

Tomorrow they will most likely try to land - either at Kennedy or Edwards but if the weather is bad they will likely scrub again and go for Wednesday. On Wednesday they will land unless it's really bad. Then (this is assuming that Kennedy, Edwards and Mexico are out) there are a number of other airfields around the world which are long enough for the shuttle. It will be a tight call between another airfield or trying again on Thursday. Note the shuttle only has 3 wave off days planned - so a thursday landing would be eating into the safety margines.

Few things to remember.....

The shuttle lands very fast and at a very steep angle and is landed manually. You need decent visibility to land. Current conditions are within limits but not great.

Once the shuttle fires its deorbit burn that's it - is has to land. It can't circle the field for a couple of hours waiting for the clouds to clear. It takes 90 minutes or so from de-orbit burn to landing.

All shuttle missions are designed with time in hand in case they can't land. I think this mission has 3 days. If you look over the shuttles history its not uncommon for landing to be delayed. The 3 days is 3 days with normal safety margines. If push comes to shove they could most likely survive for around a week.

NASA likes to land at Kennedy as then the shuttle doesn't have to be transported back there for the next launch (on the top of a boing 747 BTW). This saves a couple of weeks in turnaround times, damage in transport, cost etc. Unless to forcast for the rest of the week was awful they would not have considered an Edwards landing today.

The pilots have the most practice at landing at Kennedy.

Re:NASA is afraid of... FLUFFY, FLUFFY CLOUDS !!!

[Guppy06]

If you were going to be in an unpowered descent through a vertical distance of around 250 miles (not to mention the horizontal distance), you'd be a little concerned, too.

Here in nearby Daytona Beach, we've been having near-daily thunderstorms. The clouds caused the abort of the landing because, once you do your deorbit burn, Houston can't say "Oh, wait, it's raining now, better turn around and go back into orbit."

Re:Lemme make sure I've got this right...

[pondlife]

You're talking only about visibility, but clouds do more than just block your line of sight - they're often associated with air turbulence and various (possibly nasty) forms of precipitation, including icing.

Bearing in mind that the Shuttle glides in to land, and has no way to go around (ie abort the landing and go around for a second attempt), that means you only have one chance to get it right. So things like cloud cover, wind direction etc will affect the Shuttle much more than they would an aircraft, which can fly around bad weather, land at any number of alternate sites etc.

p.

Re:Daytime landing preferred.

[wasted time]

Not so. According to Wayne Hale, Space Shuttle Deputy Program Manager, most of the shuttle commanders prefer night landings due to generally better weather conditions and less distraction from visual stimuli on approach. He made this statement while responding to a query from a reporter during a press briefing at the Johnson Space Center.

The reporter phrased his question in a way that made it sound like NASA had intentionally scheduled a night landing to avoid a live televised disaster. What a prick. Hale responded that landing windows are a technical decision based on orbit and not something that they could just pick for convince.

More accurate headlines please

[mbeckman]

I expect dopey headlines from the traditional media, but Slashdot should do better. Announcing "Shuttle Delayed Due to Cloudy Skies" is like saying "Airliner Crash Due to Ticket Sales." The headline incorrectly gives the impression that the weather problem is not significant. Cloudy skies are not the issue -- the shuttle lands with cloudy skies all the time. The issue is unstable weather with low ceilings (as low as 500 feet). This is a much more serious condition, as any pilot can confirm. For the shuttle these are marginal conditions. They require conducting the landing under instrument flight rules, with the possibiity of losing visibility just before touchdown. At the shuttle's high speeds, this is much more serious than for commercial aviation. Attributing the delay to timidity, a publicity stunt, or wanting better photographic conditions is just stupid.