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NASA to attempt California touchdown after two failed Florida bids
AFP - Monday, December 1
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AFP) - - Bad weather scuppered two efforts to land the space shuttle Endeavour in Florida Sunday, and NASA officials said they plan instead a touchdown later in the day at Edwards Air Base in California's Mojave Desert.
NASA officials announced that two landing attempts had been aborted due to poor weather conditions at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Speaking to the Endeavour crew from mission control in Houston, Texas, NASA's Alan Poindexter said forecasts for conditions at the shuttle landing facility were not expected to improve significantly over the next day, prompting the change of landing venue.
"The winds are forecast to be similar" to Sunday's blustery conditions, which he called "a no-go forecast."
"We are going to elect to press ahead with the Edwards opportunity today," said Poindexter. "The weather looks great there."
Endeavour must land by Tuesday, at which point it will have almost exhausted its supplies of oxygen and water as well as its hydrogen batteries, which supply electricity.
NASA does not wait until the last minute to bring a shuttle back to Earth.
Just after the Endeavour undocked Friday from the International Space Station (ISS), a final inspection of its nose cap and wing leading edge panels was conducted by camera and laser device.
After completing the damage assessment, NASA's Mission Management Team cleared Endeavour's thermal shield for a safe entry and landing, said the team's chairman, LeRoy Cain.
If Endeavour returns as scheduled on Sunday, it will have spent 16 days in orbit, 12 of them docked at the ISS.
During their mission, Endeavour astronauts took four space walks to successfully repair a jammed joint of one of three rotating solar panels that harvest energy for the orbiting ISS.
Technical problems with a new piece of equipment that recycles waste water caused NASA to extend the mission by a day.
The 250-million-dollar device was an essential part of the shuttle mission to double the station's accommodation capacity.
Crew members ran three successful cycles on the unit, designed to process urine, perspiration and bath water into drinkable water.
Once up and running, the unit will be able to recycle the station's 6.8 tons of waste water produced each year, eliminating the need to regularly ferry vast quantities of water to the space station.
Samples of the drinking water produced by the machine are being brought back to Earth for analysis.
The Endeavour crew also delivered two new sleeping quarters, two ovens and a refrigerator that double the living space on the ISS to allow its crew to increase from three to six.
The Endeavour mission is the last by a US space shuttle in 2008. The next shuttle flight is scheduled for February, with another mission to continue building the space station.
The ISS should be completed in 2010, also the target date for the retirement of the US fleet of three space shuttles.
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NASA handout shows the space shuttle Endeavour prior to docking with the International Space Station on November 16, 2008. Bad weather scuppered two efforts to land the space shuttle Endeavour in Florida Sunday, and NASA officials said they plan instead a touchdown later in the day at Edwards Air Base in California's Mojave Desert.
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