**LIVE UPDATES FROM KSC SOURCES**<\/font><\/em> <\/font><\/p>\n **FREE VIDEO OF THE LAUNCH STATUS CONFERENCE WITH GERST AND THE STORM AS SEEN FROM THE ISS**<\/font><\/em> <\/em><\/font> UPDATE: Shuttle manager Leroy Cain noted that the storm would have to take a significant turn from its current path, which is deemed unlikely, to avoid the order of rollback being taken tomorrow.<\/p>\n Earlier news:<\/em> Rollback is currently the likely option, as the Hurricane continues to show it is heading towards central Florida. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2018We have two competing objectives. One we want to get the vehicle ready to go fly, the other objective is we want to get the vehicle ready to go rollback to the VAB,\u2019 said Gerstenmaier. \u2018And those options are not compatible. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2018Those are two totally different objectives, and at some point of the sequence you have to give up on either one of the other, but that point in time hasn\u2019t occurred yet.\u2019 <\/font><\/p>\n That \u2018point in time\u2019 will be midnight tonight, after managers meet to discuss both the state of the testing that has been on-going with the vehicle over the past 24-48 hours, and to assess the latest weather data.<\/p>\n The transporter-crawler, which will head to the pad in the event of a rollback, has been in action today, in case the call is made. The huge vehicle will take a few hours to get to launch pad complex 39B, ready for what would be an expected rollback late Monday night, early Tuesday morning.<\/font><\/p>\n \u2018You\u2019re going to see conflicting things,\u2019 warned Gerstenmaier. \u2018If you look around the space center you will see the crawler-transporter actually running around today, operating to see if it\u2019s ready to go. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2018You\u2019ll also see us attaching the mid-orbiter umbilical, ready for PRSD system, in preparation to offload (the fuel cell reactants) \u2013 that\u2019s all counter to what you would be doing for preparing for a launch. But that is an item you want to do if you are ready to drainback (ahead of a rollback). However, you will see activities that go both ways. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2018If you look at that, you might think we\u2019ve lost our minds, but we really haven\u2019t lost our minds, we\u2019re just protecting both options.\u2019<\/font><\/p>\n <\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n A rollback would also see the STS-115 launch attempt move to October, unless NASA can either turn around the return to the pad before September 7 \u2013 which is deemed to be very tight \u2013 or NASA can work with the Russians to delay the launch of their Soyuz vehicle. <\/p>\n The problem there is related to the International Space Station only being able to take one vehicle at a time. Thus the Shuttle has to launch before the end of the first week in September to comply.<\/font> **NASASpaceflight.com Job Opportunities**<\/em><\/font> <\/u><\/p>\n <\/em><\/font><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With Monday\u2019s launch attempt officially cancelled by NASA managers, Shuttle Atlantis now faces the direct threat of Hurricane Ernesto. The launch complex and Shuttle systems have now been cleared, following a lightning strike late last week. However, latest forecasters show Ernesto making a beeline for Florida, which would require Atlantis to be rolled back to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41963"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Associate Administrator for Space Operations, Bill Gerstenmaier noted that NASA is evaluating two options: One, to go see if they can safely press ahead with a Tuesday launch attempt, and secondly to prepare for a rollback of the vehicle to the VAB. <\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>Unless the hurricane makes a large move to the west in the tracking, or slows down considerable in its move towards Florida, it is highly unlikely NASA will be happy to leave Atlantis on the pad, due to wind strength constraints for the Shuttle.
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<\/em><\/font>LIVE UPDATE PAGES<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n