Weather

Launch day we woke late to clouds and a light wind. A weather lieutenant from NASA said that the cloud ceiling made for "red" conditions, which meant if the conditions didn't improve, and if the aircraft sent up at 11:30 report the cloud level as too thick, the launch would not happen. If the shuttle flew through a large bank of clouds at speed (800mph and rapidly increasing) water droplets would have the force of rocks, and potentially rip the tiles surrounding the orbiter, or static electricity could build up and interfere with abort codes. Weather at the overseas landing sites was green. This meant that if the shuttle needed to, it could abort and try to land in Zaragoza, Spain.