Cold weather may delay shuttle launch

An approaching cold front could thwart NASA’s plans to launch space shuttle Endeavour on Friday on a flight to the International Space Station.

But the seven astronauts arrived Tuesday ahead of the countdown start and hopeful for an on-time liftoff.

“This mission is all about home improvement, home improvement both inside and outside,” shuttle commander Christopher Ferguson said after flying in from Houston with his crew.

During the 15-day mission, the astronauts will deliver a new bathroom, kitchenette, two bedrooms and an exercise machine, as well as a water recycling system – and a new resident for the space station. A new astronaut will replace one of the three station residents.

This will be NASA’s first shuttle launch since the end of May.

Covington, La.

Police say woman killed at Klan initiation ritual

An Oklahoma woman invited to a rural Louisiana campsite for a Ku Klux Klan initiation ritual was shot and killed after she asked to be taken back to town, the sheriff of a New Orleans suburb said Tuesday.

Eight people were arrested after authorities found the woman’s body hidden under some brush, on the side of a road several miles from the remote campsite where the initiation was planned.

Investigators found weapons, several flags and six Klan robes at the campsite, St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain said in a news release.

Strain said the woman, whose identity was not released, was recruited over the Internet to participate in the ritual and then return to her home state to find other members for the white supremacist group.

But Strain said the group’s leader, Raymond “Chuck” Foster, 44, shot and killed the woman Sunday after a fight broke out when she tried to leave. Foster was charged with second-degree murder and is being held without bond.

Capt. George Bonnett, a spokesman for the sheriff’s department, said he didn’t know what the initiation involved.

“We haven’t completely sorted out if they finished the initiation,” he said. “I assume that they had started it, but I don’t know if they were finished.”

Seven others – five men and two women from 20 to 30 years old – were charged with obstruction of justice and were held on $500,000 bond at the St. Tammany Parish jail.

Authorities said some of the suspects tried to conceal the crime by burning the woman’s belongings along with other items at the campsite.

Pasadena, Calif.

Mars rover’s power down to critical levels

NASA’s Spirit rover, which is nearing its fifth year on Mars, is struggling to survive after a dust storm sapped its power, mission scientists said Tuesday.

The solar-powered Spirit produced only 89 watt-hours of energy last weekend, half the normal amount it needs to function. The culprit was a dust storm that moved over Spirit’s site near the Martian equatorial plains, blocking sunshine from reaching its solar panels.

To prevent Spirit from depleting its batteries, ground controllers commanded the rover to turn off heaters that warm various instruments. Engineers also instructed the spacecraft to cease communications with Earth until Thursday.

“This is a very dangerous time,” said project scientist Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission. “If we don’t hear from it on Thursday, we’ll be extremely concerned.”