Late Night Shuttle Launch

[ed2288]

On Tuesday, Endeavour will be blasting off at 02:28 AM.
Why are they doing it at this time? Won't everyone be really tired? Is doing it at that time the norm?

[chamois]

It's all down to timezones. From your comments, I guess you're in the UK or Europe and, yes 02:28 does seem a ridiculous time.

But when you take into account that the USA is anything between four and nine hours behind us in time, it makes sense.

They won't be tired because they won't be due to go to bed that early and as long as there are timezones in the world, yes it will always be the norm.

[chamois]

Incidentally, these launch times are also carefully calculated so that Endeavour can reach orbit and/or space station in a minimum time and with minimum fuel.

[kempie]

The launch is scheduled for 02:28 EDT, i.e. local time at Cape Kennedy or 06:28 GMT.

It will be the first shuttle launch in darkness since 2006. A quarter of all shuttle flights have begun at nighttime.

[sp1214]

To put it simply if you had to catch your 8am train you would need to get up earlier to make the connection.

[dundurn]

There's also a bit of traffic congestion at the moment. The Americans have a lot of missions to fit in to complete the ISS before they stop using the shuttles in 2010.
There was another shuttle mission only quite recently,. Then a Russian Progress supply ship had to make a docking and the ISS couln't handle this shuttle mission until that had been got out of the way. Then the Jules Verne resupply ship was launched and that's sitting in a parking orbit until this mission has finished.
There are all sorts of rules and regulations about when shuttle launches can take place. There must be good weather at Cape Kennedy, but also in Spain and a couple of other sites that might be used as emergency landing sites. There are enough restrictions that if there's a launch window available then you have to have a pretty good reason not to use it. All the early shuttle flights launched in daylight for safety reasons but the technology is a bit more tried and tested now, so a night launch, while still a bit unusual is OK.