Hubble Space Telescope be kept in a clean room, powered up and purged with nitrogen, until a launch could be rescheduled. This costly situation (about per month) pushed the overall costs of the project even higher. This delay did allow time for engineers to perform extensive tests, swap out a possibly failure-prone battery, and make other improvements. Furthermore, the ground software needed to control Hubble was not ready in 1986, and was barely ready by the 1990 launch. Eventually, following the resumption of shuttle flights in 1988, the launch of the telescope was scheduled for 1990. On April 24, 1990, successfully launched the
Space Shuttle program OV-101) was rolled out on September 17, 1976, and later conducted a successful series of glide-approach and landing tests in 1977 that were the first real validation of the design. All Space Shuttle missions were launched from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). The weather criteria used for launch included, but were not limited to: precipitation, temperatures, cloud cover, lightning forecast, wind, and humidity. The Shuttle was not launched under conditions where it could have been struck by lightning. The first fully functional orbiter was "Columbia" (designated OV-102), built in Palmdale, California. It was delivered to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on