Cape Canaveral, Fla. – NASA on Saturday ordered space shuttle Endeavour back to Earth a day early out of fear that Hurricane Dean might disrupt flight operations.
The shuttle is now scheduled to depart from the international space station today, and landing is set for Tuesday.
The astronauts had hurriedly completed a shortened spacewalk Saturday and were still cleaning up from it when the decision came down from mission managers.
NASA worried the hurricane might veer toward Houston, the home of Mission Control, forcing an emergency relocation of flight controllers to Cape Canaveral. The makeshift control center there would not be nearly as good or big as the Houston operation, and that’s why managers wanted to bring Endeavour back to Earth early.
Hurricane Dean, a fierce Category 4 storm, was headed toward Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico. It was uncertain whether the storm might strike the Texas coastline late in the week; that uncertainty made NASA’s decision all the harder.
LeRoy E. Cain, who headed Saturday’s mission-management team meeting, said it would have been irresponsible for NASA not to cut the mission short, considering most everything had already been accomplished in orbit.
