Shuttle to launch amid weird times for NASA

updated 3:48 p.m. ET June 3, 2007

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - This has been a weird year for the U.S. space agency, more notable for contributing a story line for the TV series “Law & Order” than for spaceflight.

NASA bosses hope a June 8 launch of the shuttle Atlantis and a successful mission to the international space station will fade some of the past months’ more sensational scenes.

Predictably, Atlantis commander Rick Sturckow said he and his crew haven’t been distracted from their preparations for continuing construction of the space station. 

“We’ve just been focused on our training and are ready to go,” Sturckow said.

But NASA has had several months worth of troubling distractions.

In February, astronaut Lisa Nowak, the married mother of three children, was arrested on charges that she tried to kidnap a woman who had won the affections of her astronaut-paramour. Nowak drove 900 miles from Houston to Florida to confront the woman and wore an astronaut diaper so she wouldn’t have to make restroom stops, according to police.

Weeks later, steamy e-mails surfaced and kept the story going. Nowak has pleaded not guilty and her trial is set for September. She had been scheduled to work on this mission’s ground team, working with the astronauts in space and Mission Control, but NASA dismissed her a month after her arrest.

As NASA looked forward to a March shuttle launch that would return the agency to a more positive light, golfball-sized hail from a freak February storm pocked Atlantis’ fuel tank. Liftoff was canceled.

A few months later, with just six weeks left until the new June launch date, a seventh astronaut, Clayton Anderson, was added to Atlantis’ crew — a jarring adjustment that meant working overtime to get Anderson on track with his duties during the mission.

Slide show   Month in Space See highlights from the shuttle Discovery’s flight, the Phoenix Mars Lander mission and much more in June’s roundup of cosmic pictures. more photos

There also was a murder-suicide at Houston’s Johnson Space Center and the derailment of a train carrying rocket booster segments for future shuttle flights. Neither event directly involved Atlantis’ mission but reinforced a feeling that, so far, this isn’t NASA’s best year.

“I think life presents challenges in many shapes and sizes and part of the way we deal with those challenges shapes who we are,” Anderson told The Associated Press recently. “They weren’t the greatest of times, but I’m looking forward to (Atlantis) getting off and cranking back up again so we can focus on the things that are positive.”

In related news, a union representing 570 space shuttle program workers at the Kennedy Space Center voted to strike Saturday, less than a week before the planned launch of the shuttle Atlantis.

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