Crawler...on the road again!

Space Shuttle Atlantis (OV-104) heads back to Launch Pad 39B where it will ride out Tropical Storm Ernesto. Photo credit: NASA

Mission managers are confident in the ability of the rotating service structure to protect the vehicle on the pad (except that the RSS can't protect itself let alone the stack!!) Mission managers are considering Sept. 6, 7 and 8 as potential launch dates, depending on how Ernesto affects the center (read: they want to take their holiday weekend before worrying about this anymore because they already lost their "launch on time" bonus so they might as well enjoy Labor Day Weekend)

To get daily updates--or eventually get to watch the launch live on NASA TV whenever this thing really goes--just visit the NASA PAO's launch pages at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/launch/index.html

At least half of what NASA PAO says is half-true and the other half is all buzz. In case you were wondering who to believe ;)

-sry