CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Thunderstorms have forced NASA to call off space shuttle Discovery’s launch.
The storms popped up late Monday all around the launch site, and lightning lit up the sky. A lightning strike was reported just 5 miles from the pad, in fact, and then it started to pour. The storms finally eased, but not fast enough. Launch director Pete Nickolenko waited as long as he could before halting the countdown to today’s early liftoff.
NASA will try again early Wednesday to send Discovery and seven astronauts to the international space station.
Discovery’s most prominent payload is NASA’s new $5 million treadmill, which is named after Comedy Central’s Colbert.
He could not attend the launch but said in a recorded message Monday evening that he couldn’t be prouder that his treadmill soon will be installed at the space station “to help finally slim down all those chubby astronauts.”
“Let’s face it, being weightless is mostly just a desperate bid to get away from that bathroom scale every morning,” Colbert said.
Three spacewalks will be performed during the 13-day shuttle flight, to install a new ammonia tank, part of the space station’s cooling system, and replace other equipment and retrieve outdoor experiments. And the station will get a new resident, Nicole Stott.
