Space shuttle scheduled for more attempts to land
NASA planned another attempt to return the US space shuttle Atlantis to Earth today after bad weather in Florida a day earlier kept its seven astronauts in space an extra 24 hours.
Besides Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, mission managers had an additional landing site to choose from: Edwards Air Force Base in California.
The shuttle has five chances to land today, the first at 2.18pm EDT (1918 Irish time) in Florida and the last at 6.59pm EDT (2359 Irish time) in California.
If the weather spoils all those opportunities, mission managers would activate another backup landing site in New Mexico and try for tomorrow.
The low clouds and showers that prevented Atlantis from landing at Kennedy yesterday were expected to remain today, and high winds were predicted as the day progressed at Edwards.
Atlantis has enough power for its systems to orbit until Sunday, but managers want the shuttle to land by tomorrow.
The flight would be extended to Sunday only if there were technical problems that needed to be fixed.
NASA managers prefer landing at Kennedy, which would make it easier and cheaper to prepare Atlantis for its next mission in December.
