The countdown to liftoff of space shuttle Atlantis on its STS-132 mission officially has started. Countdown clocks at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida were activated at 4 p.m. EDT, ticking backward from the T-43 hour mark.<\/p>\n
“Teams at the Kennedy Space Center and at other centers around the country have been working very hard to get this vehicle ready to fly, and I am happy to report everything is going quite well at [Launch Pad 39A],” NASA Test Director Steve Payne said Tuesday morning. “Atlantis, crew and launch team are ready to go and looking forward to a beautiful launch Friday afternoon.”<\/p>\n
During the 12-day mission, Atlantis and the mission’s six astronauts are delivering an Integrated Cargo Carrier and a Russian-built Mini Research Module to the International Space Station. Technicians will close Atlantis’ payload bay doors today, although a few experiments will be added to Atlantis’ middeck about 28 hours prior to launch.<\/p>\n
Atlantis’ astronauts arrived at Kennedy on Monday evening, touching down at the Shuttle Landing Facility in four T-38 jets at 6:49 p.m. Today the crew members will review flight day file material and take part in a checkout of their orange launch-and-entry suits.<\/p>\n
Liftoff is scheduled for May 14 at 2:20 p.m. According to Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters, weather is expected to be favorable, with a 70 percent chance of good conditions. The primary weather concern for Friday is the possibility of a low cloud ceiling. Partly cloudy and generally dry conditions will dominate the afternoon hours throughout the week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The countdown to liftoff of space shuttle Atlantis on its STS-132 mission officially has started. Countdown clocks at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida were activated at 4 p.m. EDT, ticking backward from the T-43 hour mark.<\/p>\n
“Teams at the Kennedy Space Center and at other centers around the country have been working very hard to get this vehicle ready to fly, and I am happy to report everything is going quite well at [Launch Pad 39A],” NASA Test Director Steve Payne said Tuesday morning. “Atlantis, crew and launch team are ready to go and looking forward to a beautiful launch Friday afternoon.”<\/p>\n
During the 12-day mission, Atlantis and the mission’s six astronauts are delivering an Integrated Cargo Carrier and a Russian-built Mini Research Module to the International Space Station. Technicians will close Atlantis’ payload bay doors today, although a few experiments will be added to Atlantis’ middeck about 28 hours prior to launch.<\/p>\n
Atlantis’ astronauts arrived at Kennedy on Monday evening, touching down at the Shuttle Landing Facility in four T-38 jets at 6:49 p.m. Today the crew members will review flight day file material and take part in a checkout of their orange launch-and-entry suits.<\/p>\n
Liftoff is scheduled for May 14 at 2:20 p.m. According to Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters, weather is expected to be favorable, with a 70 percent chance of good conditions. The primary weather concern for Friday is the possibility of a low cloud ceiling. Partly cloudy and generally dry conditions will dominate the afternoon hours throughout the week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":612598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shuttle-update"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/612598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}