Posted: Sat, Jul 9, 2005, 11:32 AM ET (1532 GMT)
A hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico will pose no risk to the Kennedy Space Center and thus will not delay Wednesday's scheduled launch of the space shuttle, NASA officials said Friday. Shuttle managers had raised concerns about Hurricane Dennis earlier in the week as the storm developed in the Caribbean, and made some preliminary plans to prepare the shuttle for a rollback to the Vehicle Assembly Building, but the storm is tracking well to the west of Cape Canaveral. NASA remains committed to a launch of Discovery at 3:51 pm EDT (1951 GMT) Wednesday, although there is very little passing in the schedule in the event weather or technical issues arise. The storm has led NASA to move up the arrival of the STS-114 crew from Sunday to Saturday evening, to avoid any weather-related issues in the flight from Houston. The countdown to Wednesday's launch, the first since the Columbia accident nearly two and a half years ago, will begin Sunday evening.
