KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida (CNN) --
The launch of space shuttle Atlantis on Sunday was scrubbed
for 24 hours because of lightning striking the launch pad
Friday and other weather worries, NASA announced.
The launch will be tried again Monday.
Sunday is the first day of the shuttle's launch window,
which closes September 7.
Mission managers said no other
significant issues besides weather could affect the
launch, said NASA test director Jeff Spaulding.
On Friday, lightning struck Atlantis'
launch pad 39B, which has several lightning-detection
systems -- but caused no apparent damage, said launch
director Mike Leinbach.
The Atlantis crew of six has been
waiting nearly four years for the opportunity to travel to
the International Space Station, and are hopeful the
weather will cooperate, Leinbach said.
Once Atlantis docks with the station,
the crew plans to do three spacewalks to install a second
set of solar arrays designed to provide about a quarter of
the station's power generation.
That should double the station's power
capability, in addition to adding more than 17 tons to its
mass.
The solar arrays have been packed away
since May 2003, when they were originally scheduled to be
delivered.
NASA has dubbed the 12-day mission, the
27th flight of Atlantis, the "return to assembly."
If Atlantis takes off Monday, the
mission will be the quickest turnaround between flights
since the 2003 Columbia disaster.
Space Shuttle Discovery landed on July
17 after a 13-day mission that recorded no major problems.
Weather will remain a concern for the
success of Atlantis' mission, even after launch.
NASA is closely monitoring Tropical
Storm Ernesto. If the storm gains strength and heads
directly for Houston, where Mission Control is located,
the Atlantis mission would have to end early.
There are no contingency plans, said
LeRoy Cain, launch integration manager of the space
shuttle program, on Friday. Should Mission Control be
evacuated, the complicated construction activities of the
Atlantis mission cannot be accomplished, he said.
"We would undock, de-orbit at the first
safe opportunity, and leave the (space) station in the
safest configuration we could," he said.
Still, Houston personnel will still be
able to communicate with Atlantis and the space station
crew through control rooms in Moscow, should Mission
Control have to evacuate, said space station program
manager Mike Suffredini.
NASA managers hope the Atlantis flight
can cement the agency's efforts to resume a regular
schedule of missions in order to complete the space
station before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.
Fifteen more flights -- or about four
launches a year -- are required to complete the work.
Participants in the flight readiness
review were unanimous in their decision to go ahead with
the launch of Atlantis, including two senior managers who
had declined to sign off on Discovery's launch in July,
said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for
space flight.
Those two managers, as well as the
directors of the Johnson Space Center in Houston and the
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, urged
modifications be made to "ice-front ramps" on the
shuttle's external fuel tank, however.
Small pieces of insulating foam have
come off the ice-front ramps on previous flights.
Shedding foam became a major concern
after Columbia, which disintegrated upon re-entry in 2003
after a large piece of foam cracked a heat shield on the
orbiter. All the astronauts aboard were killed.
