Stormy weather prevented space shuttle Atlantis and its crew from landing on the first try Friday, and they circled the Earth amid faint hope that the skies would clear, AP reported. The news came as no surprise to the seven astronauts, who are wrapping up a successful mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. For days, the weather outlook had been grim. «The weather just is not clearing up at the Cape at this point,» Mission Control told the crew by radio well before dawn. NASA had one more chance to bring Atlantis home on Friday, a little before noon (1600 GMT). Otherwise, the shuttle and its crew would have to remain in orbit an extra day and try for either Kennedy Space Center or the backup landing site in Southern California on Saturday. Atlantis has enough supplies to stay up until Monday. The repairs added five to 10 years to Hubble's working lifetime. Scientists hope to begin beaming back the results by early September. The six men and one woman aboard Atlantis were the last humans to set eyes upon Hubble up close. NASA plans no more satellite-servicing missions of this type, with the space telescope or anything else. That's because the shuttle is being retired next year. The replacement craft will essentially be a capsule to ferry astronauts back and forth to the International Space Station and, ultimately, the moon.
