Shuttle launch rescheduled for Friday

Discovery sits on the launch pad after Thursday's weather delay

By Richard Stenger
CNN

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida (CNN) -- Thick storm clouds and lightning near Kennedy Space Center on Thursday forced NASA to call off the launch of space shuttle Discovery just minutes before liftoff time.

The shuttle was scheduled for launch at 5:38 p.m. EDT, but launch controllers called for a 24-hour delay at 5:13.

"Given the weather conditions we have locally, I think we are in violation of launch commit criteria," said shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach. "I would propose that we start thinking about 24-hour scrub turnaround."

Mission managers will try again Friday to send up the orbiter, which will deliver a fresh crew to the international space station, said NASA spokesman Kyle Herring.

Friday's 10-minute launch window opens at 5:10 p.m. EDT. NASA will aim to launch in the middle of the window, at 5:15 p.m. EDT.

VIDEO NASA scrubs the launch on Expedition 3 due to bad weather. CNN's Eric Phillips reports (August 9) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

The shuttle crew and their primary cargo -- the next crew for space station Alpha -- climbed back out of Discovery after the scrub and returned to crew quarters for the night.

Weather not improving

Friday's launch forecast doesn't look much better, with a 70 percent chance of bad weather. Another launch window opens Saturday afternoon, but the weather prediction for that day also includes a high risk of thunderstorms.

Just before launch time, radar showed storms around Kennedy Space Center

"The next two days are going to be similar to Thursday, but worse," said meteorologist Daniel Beberwyk.

If Discovery doesn't lift off Friday or Saturday, NASA could try again sometime next week.

The nearby unmanned rocket launch facility will shut down August 18 for a month of maintenance, but whether the closure will affect the shuttle launch pad remains unknown, said a NASA spokesperson at the Kennedy Space Center.

Guests will be late

Discovery's primary goal for this mission is to deliver three new crew members to Alpha and to bring home Russian commander Yury Usachev and astronauts Susan Helms and Jim Voss. The trio has been on Alpha for five months, since Discovery dropped them off in March.

Shuttle commander Scott Horowitz was the last crew member to leave Discovery after the mission was delayed

They were up and waiting for the shuttle when station managers broke the news that their guests would be late.

Discovery also will deliver some new furniture to the space station -- a sleeping cabin that will be placed in a vacant section of the Destiny science laboratory. Currently, there are sleeping quarters for only two Alpha inhabitants. The third must settle for a makeshift bunk in Destiny.

While the current Alpha residents have greeted many visiting astronauts and cosmonauts during their stint in space, the new trio -- U.S. commander Frank Culbertson and cosmonauts Mikhail Tyurin and Vladimir Dezhurov -- expects only one visit during their four-month stay, a Russian Soyuz crew that will deliver a fresh escape capsule.

The three-person Soyuz lifeboats must be replaced every six months. The visiting cosmonauts will return in the one now docked to the station.