The United States Space Shuttle Atlantis and the European space station module Columbus are ready for launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, although NASA and ESA have said that there is only a “40 percent chance of acceptable conditions at launch times.”
The launch director of Atlantis said that “the scope of the mission is first of course to bring the Columbus laboratory to space, to install it on the international space station, make all the connections, and of course activate the module, power it and bring the cooling and do all the activation."
The ESA Program manager for the International Space Station said that he thought the “the European team are looking forward to the launch on Thursday." Leroy Cain, the American manager of the mission said that he believed "the team is in great shape and we're ready to move forward," 
NASA said that “the five mission specialists for the flight are also spending full days with checklists and practicing their flight tasks.” He also said that the astronauts  “have simulators at their disposal that let them rehearse the complex duties required in orbit.” The flight is due to be launched at 19:45 UTC (14:45 local time) tomorrow.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Share this: 






This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.
Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.
Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.
Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.
Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.
Space shuttle Atlantis set for launch with Columbus module