With a slightly more easterly path, Hurricane Dennis could push NASA's planned return-to-space shuttle flight back two weeks.
Shuttle program managers hope to send Discovery into orbit Wednesday, but that date could slip into the last week of July should Dennis threaten Cape Canaveral with hurricane-force winds and make officials move the $2 billion space plane off the launchpad.

If the forecast calls for sustained winds of 69 mph, NASA's guidelines say a shuttle on the pad must be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to ride out the storm, Kennedy Space Center spokesman Bruce Buckingham said Wednesday. Once the storm threat is over, the shuttle could be moved back to the launchpad, at which point workers would have tasks requiring a week and a half to get the shuttle ready for launch.

"Right now we're just watching it," Buckingham said, adding that space shuttle managers are in close contact with meteorologists at the National Hurricane Center in addition to their own forecasters.

As of late Wednesday, officials were still planning on a launch attempt at 3:51 p.m. next Wednesday.

"We've got a hip-pocket plan to roll back if necessary," Buckingham said. "We're not going to risk damaging the orbiter."

If NASA does roll the shuttle back to the building in the coming days and then rolls it back out to the pad by July 11, a launch attempt likely would not be possible until about July 21 - leaving NASA only 11 days of the 20 days in its July launch window.

The window is the period when the international space station is directly over Cape Canaveral when the shuttle lifts off, which enables a rendezvous.

NASA's safety rules for the next two launches requires them to take place in daylight - drastically limiting opportunities. After the July 13-31 period ends, the next launch window will not open until Sept. 9.

Discovery will be the first shuttle to fly since Columbia tore apart during reentry on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

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