Hurricane Lili delays NASA shuttle's launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's first shuttle launch in four months was postponed Tuesday because of Hurricane Lili.

The space agency did not want to take a chance of launching Atlantis Wednesday, only to have the hurricane bear down on Houston, home to Mission Control. So NASA halted the countdown and aimed for liftoff no earlier than Thursday.

The mission to deliver another girder to the international space station is already six weeks late because of cracked pipes that needed to be repaired.

This is the first time in 41 years of human spaceflight that a launch has been delayed by the possibility of bad weather 900 miles away in Houston. Severe tropical weather has postponed shuttle missions before, but only when it threatened Florida.

"The hurricane threat is usually here, it's not in Houston. We kind of feel like, been there, done that," said NASA spokesman George Diller. "In a way, it's kind of paradoxical to see this going on in Houston when it's usually the cape that has the problems."

If Houston becomes Lili's target, NASA would put off the launch until the hurricane passes. In addition, nearly 30 Johnson Space Center employees in Cape Canaveral for the launch would be sent back home to Houston to prepare for Lili. That might include the six astronauts assigned to the mission.

Shutting down Mission Control -- and reactivating it -- is a complicated affair. If an evacuation were ordered, it would take at least a few days to bring the Houston control center back up and Atlantis' launch could slip into next week.