Thursday's inclement weather prompted NASA officials to delay for several hours the scheduled rollback of the rotating service structure, which protects the space shuttle Atlantis from the elements.
Separately, technicians were investigating a possible lightning strike within one-third of a mile from the launch pad.
The RSS rollback was scheduled for noon today, but bad weather that rolled into the area surrounding Florida's Kennedy Space Center prompted officials to hold off. They will try again starting at 2:35pm.
The planned 11:26am Friday launch, however, is still a go, despite a 70 percent chance that weather will delay its departure. Once the RSS is removed, there are several tasks that need to be completed before tanking, or fueling, begins early tomorrow morning.
Even if is raining on Friday, the launch could still happen, Mike Leinbach, shuttle launch director, said during a Wednesday press conference. "If it's cumulus clouds and rain showers, as long as we get a hold over the pad, that's a go day for us," he said. It could be pouring rain everywhere else in the county, but if there is a break in the cloud coverage, "we can go," he said, and that's what technicians are aiming to do.
"Our teams here and really all around the world have been working extremely hard for quite awhile on this particular mission to make sure the vehicle and the payload are ready for hopefully a magnificent launch on Friday," NASA Test Director Jeff Spaulding said in a statement.
On the lightning, meanwhile, engineers will review the data to see if it affected Atlantis or any of the pad's ground support equipment, NASA said. Continued thunderstorms have prevented shuttle teams from conducting a detailed pad inspection, which must occur before the RSS rollback.
If tomorrow's launch goes according to plan, it will be webcast live on NASA TV.
Space shuttle launch delays are nothing new, though officials are at least only contending with weather-related issues rather than technical problems with the vehicle. Shuttle Discovery launched in February after a nearly four-month delay due to weather, leaks, and cracks. The shuttle Endeavour, meanwhile, launched in May, but not before NASA had to scrub the initial launch because Endeavour's auxiliary power unit failed.