Space Shuttle Atlantis is in good shape but there is a 30% chance of showers and cumulus clouds in the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) area stopping the Shuttle's launch planned for 6 September.
At today's 1400GMT countdown status briefing launch weather officer Kathy Winters spoke of showers expected within 20km (10nm) of KSC and the possible presence of cumuus clouds, considered a danger to an acsending Shuttle because of their ice particles and potential charge they hold and the lightning they could unleash.
NASA's shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach was more upbeat about the condition of the Shuttle stack, he said, "the countdown is going extremely well, we are not tracking any issues."
The weather predictions of 30% chance of prohibitive weather are currently being repeated for 7 and 8 September, the alternative dates if NASA had to scrub Wednesday's launch.
Atlantis's flight, STS-115, is an 11-day mission at the International Space Station (ISS) assembling the P3/P4 trusses with three extra-vehicular activities for the station's new solar arrays.
Atlantis was to have launched on 27 August but storm weather delayed lift off to this week. A 27 August launch would have seen it land back on Earth on 7 August, however the delay to this week impacts on a Soyuz mission to the ISS.
Soyuz spacecraft TMA-9, carrying the ISS expedition 14 crew, NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, and the first female space tourist, Anousheh Ansari, was to lift off on 14 September, and return on 24 September.
Because a 6 September Atlantis launch would mean the Orbiter being at ISS when a 14 September launched TMA-9 arrives, the Soyuz launch has been postponed to 18 September. An 18 September launch means TMA-9 arrives two days after the Orbiter, launched on 6 September, leaves.
Following TMA-9's arrival TMA-8, launched on 30 March this year with ISS expedition 13 crew members cosmonaut and expedition commander Pavel Vinogradov and flight engineer NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams, will return to Earth on 26 September with its March passengers and Ansari.
Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin will join German born European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter. Reiter, flown to ISS on Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-121 in July, was a flight engineer on the 13th expedition crew and will be again for 14. Reiter's arrival saw the ISS's crew complement return to three since the 2003 Shuttle Columbia disaster. He will return to Earth aboard the Shuttle mission STS-116 or a Russian Soyuz.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
