A low cloud ceiling on Sunday forced NASA, the U.S. space agency to postpone the launch of the shuttle Endeavor by 24 hours . The shuttle Endeavor suppose to take six astronauts on board to the International Space Station (ISS) .
“We tried really up but the weather was too unstable and we were simply not comfortable for the shuttle launch tonight,” said Mike Leinbach, launch director, about ten minutes before the scheduled time off. “Therefore we decided to postpone the launch by 24 hours,” he added.
NASA will try again Monday at 09H14 GMT (04H14 local). Weather forecasts give a 60% chance of favorable conditions. Until Saturday night, the odds of acceptable weather for launch Endeavor were 80% but had been revised to 60% shortly after 0500 GMT on Sunday before moving into the red less than an hour before launch.
Endeavour’s next launch attempt was scheduled for Monday at 4:14 am (0914 GMT).The main objective of this flight of 13 days, the first in 2010 by a shuttle is the delivery and installation of Tranquility module (Node 3), and the Cupola observation dome, built for NASA by the European group Thales Alenia Space in Turin (Italy).
With the delivery of Tranquility – 18 tonne, 7 meters long with a diameter of 4.5 m – Dome and Cupola – 1.9 ton, 1.5 m long and 2.9 m in diameter — ISS will be 90% completed.
The installation of these modules will require three spacewalks orbit 6 hours and a half each by a team of two astronauts. Tranquility contain the support system of life with the most advanced ever flown in space. It includes sanitation and environmental control for the orbital outpost and a toilet compartment for the crew.
The small module Cupola will also be attached to Tranquility. This dome with six windows on the sides and a central window, all equipped with shutters to protect against micro-meteorites, offer a breathtaking view of Earth from the ISS. But Cupola will also be a function key with its robotic workstation, which will be monitored the maintenance of the ISS.
The mission comes at a time when NASA is experiencing a revolution with the abandonment request to Congress by President Barack Obama’s Constellation program, which provided a return Americans to the moon by 2020.
Besides the death of Constellation and uncertainty about what will succeed it, 2010 also marks the end of three shuttle flights remaining in the fleet after five more missions planned including one that has been postponed. The first orbiter was launched in April 1981.
The ISS, which Mr. Obama wants to extend until 2020, is a project involving 16 countries, costing 100 billion dollars mainly funded by the United States.
Once the shuttles will fly over the United States depend exclusively on Russian Soyuz to transport astronauts to the ISS.
To reduce this dependency period and lower costs, Obama wants to encourage development of private transport services orbital from which NASA will outsource the delivery of its astronauts to the ISS.