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Weather Expected To Cooperate For Night Shuttle Launch

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By NEIL JOHNSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 14, 2008

Updated: 11/14/2008 08:23 am

NASA officials believe weather on the East Coast will cooperate tonight to launch the space shuttle, and weather here could provide decent conditions for anyone wanting to watch the nighttime liftoff.

The Endeavour is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral at 7:55 p.m., more than two hours after sunset in Tampa.

Clouds from the daytime should be thinning about 8 p.m., and no major weather system will be moving in. If the launch is on schedule, it will come before a cool front begins to move through that may bring rain and thunderstorms.

The sky won't be completely clear, but on the thinner end of partly cloudy. However, there is no guarantee some clouds won't pop up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There is a 20 percent chance for rain.

In Cape Canaveral, conditions are at 70 percent for the launch. Meanwhile three men aboard the international space station eagerly awaited thousands of pounds of new equipment for remodeling and expanding their home.

Among the items being carried up by Endeavour and its seven astronauts: a new bathroom, kitchenette, exercise machine, two bedrooms and a system capable of turning urine into drinking water.

This will be the 31st shuttle launch in darkness out of 124 flights. That's one-quarter of all missions.

Information from The Associated Press was included in this report.

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