Weather permitting, the space shuttle Discovery will
leave California today to make a relatively short hop
to Fort Worth, Texas, on the back of a modified Boeing
747 before returning to its Florida home.
Takeoff is tentatively scheduled for 10 a.m. at
Edwards Air Force Base, but the piggyback flight could
be delayed if bad weather develops.
Ferry flight rules state that the orbiter and the
Shuttle Carrier Aircraft cannot fly through
precipitation, thick clouds or high turbulence. Wind
and temperature restrictions apply as well.
The current flight plan calls for an overnight stop in
Forth Worth before the shuttle continues on to Kennedy
Space Center at Cape Canaveral tomorrow.
The cross-country flight will be a relatively slow and
short one, considering that the shuttle hits the
earth's atmosphere at about twice the speed of sound
and, in space, can round the globe in a few hours.
Discovery landed at Edwards on a week ago today after
a 203-orbit mission to outfit the International Space
Station for its first resident crew, which is
scheduled to launch tomorrow from the Kazakhstan
aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule.
Last week's landing at Edwards was the shuttle's first
since March 1996. Mission controllers prefer that it
land in Florida due to the cost of hauling the 200-ton
spacecraft back home--nearly $1 million.
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