Update: the launch has been postponed once again, this time to no earlier than 3:21 p.m. Eastern time Sunday.
The Space Shuttle Atlantis is due to launch on Saturday no earlier than 3:43 p.m. Eastern time. I will probably Twitter it live, if you cannot connect to NASA TV.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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December 7th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
…staurday uh?
I’ll watch!
December 7th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Michelle:
Must be the lolcats.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Well, let me just say huzzah for HD Net for broadcasting the shuttle launches in HD. They are quite fun to watch…you know, when they actually occur. Otherwise I get like 2 hours of ultimate fighting on the DVR.
December 7th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Ah yes, Staurday, the day before Stunday, right?
I hope it works this time around. The lovely weather may not last!
December 7th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
delayed until at least Sunday:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1251
December 7th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Oh, Grand Lunar:
It’s Snuday, not Stunday!
December 7th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
That’s the staurdate
December 7th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
NASA is changing flight rules and will not fix the faulty sensors prior to launch. (http://www.floridatoday.com/floridatoday/blogs/spaceteam/)
Once again, NASA is taking a risk against its own well-developed safety rules in order to meet the rigors of its self-imposed schedule. People tend to think that the International Space Station *must* be finished by 2010 and that the Shuttle *must* be retired when that happens, but that’s an artificial and political deadline that is as malleable as Congress and/or the President changing their minds.
That begs the question: WHY the rush and why the unnecessary risks?
Answer: Go Fever.
This could end the Shuttle and the ISS if the worst happens. And good people would unnecessarily die.
Not only that, good people not involved in the decision chain and whose livelihoods depend on NASA would lose their jobs.
Bill Gerstner and his crew better hope they’re right on this one.
December 7th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
they should just forget about the station and skip right to Hubble.
December 7th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Or skip Hubble and put the money into getting Orion developed faster in order to get an Ares V on the pad with the Webb Telescope.
December 7th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
They are not relaxing flight rules, but thinking of tightening them to what they had previously, that being 4 of 4 sensors had to work in order to fly. Currently, they are go with 3 of 4. There is no way they would go with only 2 sensors working.
This brings up an interesting question, what if something were to go wrong with any of the flights between now and 2010? I assume the Shuttle fleet would be permanently grounded. Would it not make more sense to pursue the Ares project instead of continuing to fund the ISS white elephant, that as far as I can see, has not yielded any real results?
December 8th, 2007 at 4:40 am
If another was lost, then it would probably mean the permanent grounding of the fleet.
Aside from pretty pictures, the only result that was new to me from the ISS is the amount of bone loss astronauts experience in microgravity.
I suppose NASA feels obligated to finish what was started with the ISS.
I hope that at least they’ll turn it over completely to the international partners and let Russia be the main players with it.
An international Moon base would be far more impressive, IMO.
December 8th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Hi Folks,
from my point of view it’s only to a small extent NASA pushing for launch. Charles is absolutely right in saying that it’s the congress and ultimately money which set the artificial deadline of 2010. One month less in Iraq would reliev NASA fiscal constraints and nobody there would try to rush anything.
By the way, the reason tfor ISS has been political (former adversaries turned into collaborators which is a good one) but now is scientific. And why should we swap one scientific area against another (ISS vs. Webb)? There’s no gain in it.
Alien from Europe
December 8th, 2007 at 7:20 am
Folks, once more it’s me,
Grand Lunar is wrong in saying that appart from some pretty pictures and bone loss measurements there’s little from ISS. There are many different results mainly from material sciences which admittedly are not as sexy or spectacular as findings from Hubble but do have their merritt. Back in the fifties when soem physicists announced that they were able to produce monochromatic coherent light the most common reaction was: so what? Nowadays you earn billions with lasers!
And that the ISS produced so little so far has not been the fault of NASA but the meagre budget that was allocated.
Alien from Europe
December 8th, 2007 at 8:45 am
I throughly enjoyed last night’s Stargate Atlantis. Now awaiting this Atlantis. Quite an Atlantisful weekend.
I am the king of horrible puns.
December 8th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
No! NOOOO! For the love of God, Montresor, NO! I mean, I’m all in favor of the Hubble and everything, but if Servicing Mission 4 were to launch any earlier than planned, I just know the instruments wouldn’t be ready. I have that feeling.
But back on topic, I liked they way the official announcement said they were tightening the flight rules, by requiring all four sensors to work. Presumably that means without understanding why they’re failing. Does that seem right to you?
December 8th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
It does seem a bit odd that they have had problems since the Columbia disaster with the sensors.
December 9th, 2007 at 7:01 am
Scrubbed again:
December 9th, 2007 at 7:32 am
Scrub again. (LH2 ECO #3 failed this time)
Look for a rollback to the VAB later this week and a new launch date sometime after Jan. 2nd, depending on how much hardware they need to test through and replace.
(Next year’s flight schedule is still good if they launch before late-January.)
December 9th, 2007 at 8:03 am
NASA announced that the launch has been postponed until January 2 at the earliest. It seems that one of the sensors failed during today’s fueling, and they decided to not push the issue, take Atlantis back to the VAB, and WORK THE PROBLEM.
When NASA is allowed to function the way it is supposed to, without politics, amazing things get done (Galelio, Cassini, Spirit, Opportunity, Voyager 1&2, etc.). From what I’ve seen, at least 3/4 of ‘go-fever’ is attributable to politicians, accountants, and others pushing for launch, instead of allowing the scientists and engineers to run the show. This is one case where you can accurately say, HEY, THIS IS ROCKET SCIENCE!
December 9th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Not to harp on this, as I’m sure it’s been debated before, but the inherent problems in the Shuttle date back to the early ’70’s when this design was given the go-ahead. It’s sad to think about where the Space Program could have been today if things had been different.
With all of these delays, are we going to see a return to launch fever as the 2010 deadline approaches for the retirement of the Shuttle?
December 9th, 2007 at 8:34 am
I just read on my Wii (Yes, my Wii. ) that the shuttle launch has been scrubbed until January. S’that true?
December 9th, 2007 at 9:24 am
I’m sooooo confused. (but that happens alot)
December 9th, 2007 at 9:37 am
To Michelle: Yes, January 2. NASA wants to try and figure out the fuel sensor problem.
December 10th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Delayed til Stanuary