William Atkins
Friday, 05 September 2008 19:44
Science -
Space
Page 1 of 2
The important mission of the space shuttle Atlantis to service and repair the Hubble Space Telescope has been delayed over the past few days as Tropical Storms Fay and Hanna hit the Florida Coast. Now, Hurricane Ike and Tropical Storm Josephine threaten to cause further problems.
Space shuttle
Atlantis, and the crew of NASA mission STS-125, are expected to launch October 8, 2008, but will probably be delayed a few days because of troublesome weather and a few technical problems.
The space shuttle was rolled out from the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to launch complex 39A on Thursday, September 4, 2008, beginning at about 9:19 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).
The trip, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Cape Canaveral, Florida, took just under five hours. Atlantis moved atop the crawler-transporter at less then one mile per hour over the approximate 31.5 mile journey.
According to
Florida Today,
Angie Brewer, Atlantis flow director, stated,
"I'm so happy that we could get her out. We've had our challenges, between Fay and Hanna and everything else." [FloridaToday.com: “
NASA happy to roll Atlantis to launch pad”]
Test and video of Angie Brewer talking about “
Preparing Atlantis for Flight” (on STS-117) is found on the NASA website. Brewer oversees the processing of
Atlantis for all of her missions.
Dangerous storms are still a possibility for the Kennedy Space Center and the central Florida region. Please read page two for more details.
