Clouds, Wind Force a Second Delay for Shuttle Endeavour

Clouds and wind forced NASA to delay the planned launch Friday of the space shuttle Endeavour on its mission to study the Earth. It was the second launch delay this week.

Liftoff for the Earth radar-mapping mission was rescheduled for 4:05 a.m. PDT today, with better weather in the forecast.

NASA halted the countdown and waited for nearly three hours in hopes low clouds over the launch site would break up. When they did, a crosswind exceeded safety limits, a minor communications problem popped up and launch director Bob Sieck called it quits.

By then, the six astronauts had been strapped inside the fueled ship for more than five hours, slightly longer than desired. They left the shuttle at late morning, sipping bottled water and shaking hands with technicians.

NASA then drained more than a half-million gallons of fuel from Endeavour’s tank. The delay cost nearly $500,000 for the fuel alone.

Earlier in the week, NASA had delayed the launch from Thursday to Friday to check Endeavour’s engine oxidizer pumps for a defect discovered elsewhere in the fleet. The pumps checked out fine.

Friday’s scrub delayed another NASA launch.

The flight of an unmanned Atlas rocket with a crucial weather satellite was moved from Tuesday to Wednesday as a result of the need for today’s launch attempt for Endeavour. The military has reserved time in between for a classified operation.

The Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which tracks ascending rockets for safety purposes, needs two days between launch attempts to reprogram computers.

Once the nine-day shuttle flight begins, $366-million radar equipment will map Earth’s surface. NASA says it is the finest space radar ever designed for environmental research, an advancement akin to color pictures versus black-and-white.

The radar will scan Earth’s surface and the astronauts will photograph the same scenes 138 miles below for comparison. About 2,000 researchers, teachers and students at sites around the globe will help to verify the radar’s accuracy.

NASA plans to fly the radar instruments on Endeavour again in August to see how the sites look in a different season.