The shuttle Endeavour's hard-luck crew was forced to pass up two more Florida landing opportunities today because of dismal weather at the Kennedy Space Center. The astronauts now are setting their sights on a landing Saturday, in Florida or California, to finally bring their marathon mission to a close after a record fourth extension day.

With the top of NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building obscured by low clouds from a slow-moving cold front, entry flight director Wayne Hale waved off the crew's first landing opportunity shortly before 10 a.m, ruling out a landing at 1:57 p.m. While the forecast for the second opportunity at 3:33 p.m. remained bleak, Hale decided to have the crew work through the deorbit prep timeline just in case the weather miraculously improved.

But that hope was slim to begin with and at 1:17 p.m., an hour and 10 minutes before commander James Wetherbee had hoped to fire Endeavour's braking rockets to begin the descent to Earth, astronaut Duane Carey in mission control called up the bad news.

"We're sorry to tell you we're going to wave off for the day," he radioed from Houston. "We're going to back out of the procedures."

"OK, from Endeavour, Wayne, thanks for trying today," Wetherbee replied. "Of course you know best and we appreciate all the effort."

NASA did not staff the backup shuttle landing site at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., for a landing attempt today. Edwards will, however, be staffed Saturday and NASA plans to bring the shuttle down, one way or the other, at Kennedy or Edwards.

Wetherbee and his crewmates will have two landing opportunities at each site Saturday. The latest times are (in EST):

   
ORBIT....SITE.....DEORBIT BURN.....LANDING

215......KSC......01:32 p.m........02:37 p.m.
216......KSC......03:09 p.m........04:15 p.m.
217......EDW......04:40 p.m........05:45 p.m.
218......EDW......06:17 p.m........07:22 p.m.

The outlook for Edwards calls for scattered clouds at 6,000 and 25,000 feet and winds from 20 degrees peaking at a light 8 knots.

Endeavour has enough on-board supplies to remain in orbit until Sunday in a worst case scenario and both landing sites are expected to be "go" Sunday if it comes to that. But given the current forecast, Hale is confident about getting Endeavour down Saturday on one coast or the other.