The weather for the rest of the Thursday around KSC in Florida is described as “dynamic” with plenty of cloud cover, rain, and thunderstorm conditions. Mission controllers and members of the Spaceflight Meteorology Group are monitoring the weather forecasts in Florida and at Edwards Air Force Base in California for possible Friday landing attempts at both locations.

Mission controllers and astronauts are also re-configuring the Space Shuttle Atlantis for another day in orbit about the Earth.

NASA is planning on four possible landing opportunities for Atlantis: two at the Florida landing site at KSC  and two in California at Edwards Air Force Base.

The first KSC opportunity is on Orbit #218, with a de-orbit maneuver at 1:14 p.m. EDT (17:14 GMT). The second opportunity is on Orbit #219, and a de-orbit burn at 2:50 p.m. and a landing at 3:51 p.m. at Kennedy. However, weather conditions are not forecast to improve any on Friday in Florida.

Thus, two landing opportunities are being planned at Edwards Air Force Base in California: one on Orbit #220, with a de-orbit burn at 4:19 p.m. EDT (20:19 GMT) and landing at 5:21 p.m. EDT and a fourth and final opportunity on Orbit #221, with a de-orbit maneuver at 5:55 p.m. EDT and subsequent landing at 6:56 p.m. EDT (22:56 GMT).

Landing opportunities are also available Saturday. However, the CapCom (Capsule Communicator) for the STS-117 mission, stationed at the Mission Control Center (Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas) just informed the astronauts that NASA wants to land Friday, if possible.

Unless absolutely necessary NASA does not want to land at Edwards Air Force Base in California or the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, because either landing site will necessitate NASA returning the orbiter piggyback on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA). Such a process is expensive but, more importantly, will cause added time delays in future missions—something NASA does not want to do unless absolutely necessary.

The SCA consists of two intensively modified Boeing 747 jets that NASA uses to transport a space shuttle orbiter from one spot to another, usually from a landing site in California or New Mexico to the launch complex at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. One SCA is a Boeing 747-100 jet and the other is a Boeing 747-100SR jet, a shorter-range aircraft.

The Mate-Demate Device places the orbiter, in this case Atlantis, on top of the SCA—large gantry-type structure that hoists the orbiter off the ground for post-flight servicing and, then, mates the shuttle with the SCA for its ferry flight across country

STS-117 (Space Transportation System-117) is the 118th space shuttle mission by NASA and the 21st mission to stop by the International Space Station. The next mission, STS-118, is slated to launch on August 18, 2007.

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