Dec 5, 2007 9:56 am US/Eastern
Atlantis Will Launch On Thursday
CAPE CANAVERAL (CBS4) ―
NASA cleared Atlantis for a Thursday launch, one month after the last space shuttle flight and
a flurry of work since then getting the international space station ready for a new laboratory.
Space station program manager Mike Suffredini said the crew in orbit worked hard over the past three weeks to prepare for the arrival of Atlantis and its primary payload, the European Space Agency's lab module, Columbus.
The station astronauts performed three spacewalks to ready the Harmony docking compartment that was delivered on the last shuttle flight.
NASA has exactly one week in December to get Atlantis off the ground with Columbus. Otherwise, the launch will have to be postponed until early January because of unfavorable sun angles for the docked shuttle and NASA's desire to avoid flying a shuttle at the very end of the year. The concern is that the computer software might not switch over properly to 2008.
NASA hopes that with an on-time launch and power conservation, Atlantis will have enough electricity and supplies to remain at the space station two extra days. That will enable the astronauts to
add a fourth spacewalk and perform a detailed inspection of a malfunctioning joint that controls the movement of one set of solar wings.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
