The hurricane season appears to be constantly delaying NASA’s plans of moving the shuttle Atlantis to the 39A launch pad. First, Tropical Storm Fay forced NASA to close its Kennedy Space Center for three days last week, right as they were about to proceed with the shuttle plans. Now, Hurricane Hanna causes even more uncertainty as it forced NASA to delay Atlantis’ move by another 24 hours.

The Kennedy Space Center is constantly receiving information on Hanna’s course, and for safety reasons they've decided to proceed with Atlantis’ transfer to the launch pad no earlier than Wednesday. Hurricane Hanna is expected to make a close encounter with NASA’s space center, as it continues its course toward Georgia and South Carolina.

The original plans were to move Atlantis to the 39A launch pad by August 30, in preparation for the October 8 launch. However, it looks like the weather opposed NASA’s plans, and things continue to worsen, as yet another tropical storm (Ike), possibly turning into a hurricane, appears to be following Hanna’s path.

Hurricane Hanna was located approximately 90 miles north-northeast of the southeastern Bahamas on Monday, and continued to go west at 2mph. Rainfall is expected in southeastern Bahamas, as well as the Turks and Caicos Islands on Thursday.

According to NASA, the ocean swells will increase the risk of dangerous rip current along portions of the southeastern United States over the next few days, which prompted them to delay their plans in order to better assess the impact Hanna could have over the Kennedy Space Center.

NASA still hopes to launch Atlantis on October 8, although if weather threats continue, the engineers may not have enough time to properly handle unexpected issues before the launch.