NASA clears shuttle for launch attempt Wednesday

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA managers have
cleared space shuttle Atlantis for a launch attempt on
Wednesday after a week’s delay due to a lightning strike and a
storm, officials with the U.S. space agency said on Monday.

Atlantis’ liftoff is targeted for 12:29 p.m. on Wednesday
at the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida. Managers are
also prepared to make launch attempts on Thursday and Friday if
the weather or technical problems prevent liftoff on Wednesday.

“We feel like we are in very good shape,” said Kennedy
Space Center launch manager LeRoy Cain, who told a briefing
that NASA’s mission management team had cleared the space
shuttle for the launch attempt.

It will be NASA’s first mission to restart construction of
the half-built, $100 billion International Space Station since
before the 2003 Columbia disaster.

“The wait’s nearly over,” said Jeff Spaulding, a NASA
launch director at the Kennedy Space Center.

NASA had planned to launch Atlantis and its six-member crew
last week, but a lightning strike at the launch pad and then
high winds from Tropical Storm Ernesto kept the winged
spacecraft grounded.

Meteorologists on Monday predicted an 80 percent chance the
weather would be acceptable for launch.

Atlantis’ primary payload, one of the heaviest ever for a
shuttle, is a $372 million space station truss segment that
contains a pair of power-producing solar arrays.

“We are into the heart of the (station) assembly and we
certainly have our fingers crossed that things are going to go
very well,” said shuttle program manager Wayne Hale.

The equipment was to have been installed in 2003, but NASA
stopped flying the space shuttles after losing shuttle Columbia
and its seven astronauts on February 1, 2003. The spaceship
broke apart as it headed toward landing because its heat shield
had been damaged by falling foam insulation during launch.

The agency has since flown two test flights to check
equipment redesigns that cleared the way for Atlantis to resume
space station assembly.

NASA has just four years to finish work on the research
outpost because the shuttles — the only vehicles designed to
carry the station’s major components to orbit — are due to be
retired in 2010.