Storms Delay Shuttle Missions to Hubble, Space Station

Storms Delay Shuttle Missions to Hubble, Space Station. [space.com] NASA's space shuttle Atlantis will blast off two days late next month due to delays from recent storms that have also waylaid a planned November shuttle mission, agency officials said Friday. Atlantis is now set to launch no earlier than Oct. 10 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on the final mission to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope. The second shuttle mission is now pegged for a Nov. 12 launch, two days later than planned, toward the International Space Station. The launch targets for both missions - NASA's last two of the year - were pushed back due to downtime associated with Tropical Storms Fay and Hanna, both of which hindered flight preparations for Atlantis and its Hubble instrument cargo at the seaside KSC spaceport in Cape Canaveral, Fla. "It was payload preparations," NASA spokesperson Candrea Thomas of KSC told SPACE.com. "When we had Fay, it put the payload folks back four days. They made up two, but it's just a matter of being able to get them some extra time so that we can launch."