California Bypassed as NASA Delays Shuttle Landing Again

Hoping to salvage a vital scientific mission in March, NASA on Friday passed up a landing opportunity in California on the outside chance of landing the space shuttle Columbia in Florida this morning.

At stake is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s most important effort to study Halley’s comet. Columbia is scheduled to blast off March 6 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the first of several planned flights of an ultraviolet observatory called Astro.

The observatory includes the largest telescopes ever deployed in space, and, although it will serve many purposes in the years ahead, its principal target has always been Halley’s comet.

Trip to Florida Cited

NASA officials delayed Friday’s landing because, if the shuttle lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, the extra week it will take to ferry the spacecraft back to Kennedy will virtually wipe out any chance of making the March launching date. It may be possible to launch a few days later and still observe the comet but, the longer the delay, the less attractive the mission becomes from a scientific perspective, NASA scientists said.

The landing problems cap one of the most frustrating of all the 24 shuttle flights. The launching was delayed six times because of a series of problems, including weather, and equipment failures robbed the seven-man crew of some of its scientific objectives.

To save one precious day in the crowded schedule leading up to the March launching, the space agency decided to cut the five-day mission to four days and bring the ship home on Thursday. But rain in Florida, which could have damaged the shuttle’s protective tiles on re-entry, forced a one-day delay.

18 Minutes to Spare

On Friday, rain again prohibited the landing at Kennedy, and NASA decided to pass up the chance to land at Edwards. The decision not to land in Florida was made just 18 minutes before commander Robert L. Gibson and co-pilot Charles F. Bolden were to fire the rockets and drop the spacecraft out of orbit.

Weather in Florida was considered “marginal” for today, and NASA planned to have the shuttle land at Edwards at 5:58 a.m. PST if it could not land in Florida.

The crew includes Rep. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), whose district includes the Kennedy Space Center, RCA engineer Robert J. Cenker and NASA astronauts Steven A. Hawley, George D. Nelson and Franklin R. Chang-Diaz.