STS-130 mission managers opted to forego a planned orbit adjust burn, changing space shuttle Endeavour’s deorbit and landing times by a few minutes.
Weather permitting, Endeavour’s deorbit burn will occur at 9:14 p.m. EST Sunday, leading to a landing at Kennedy Space Center at 10:20 p.m. There is a second Kennedy landing opportunity at 11:55 p.m. There also are two opportunities at Edwards Air Force Base in California early Monday at 1:25 a.m. and 3 a.m. Ground tracks for Endeavour’s landing opportunities are posted on NASA’s Web:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts130/news/landing.html
Forecasters are predicting a chance of showers within 30 nautical miles of Kennedy’s shuttle landing facility and a cloud ceiling at 6,000 feet, both violations of landing flight rules. The forecast for Edwards also predicts violations for showers within 30 nautical miles of the runway and low cloud ceilings.
Earlier Saturday, Endeavour’s astronauts completed the standard day-before-entry checkout of the shuttle’s flight control systems and reaction control system jets.