Live: Crew set to fly in amid new trouble

The Atlantis astronauts will jet in to Kennedy Space Center today to take part in a practice countdown for a planned Oct. 10 launch -- a target date that could be delayed by a new payload problem.

The payload for NASA's fifth and final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission was delivered to launch pad 39A late Saturday, but it could not be lifted into the Payload Changeout Room at the towering gantry.

The canister used to transport the cargo from the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility in the KSC Industrial Area could not be mated properly with ground support equipment at the pad. Engineers are troubleshooting the problem.

The payload trouble, which follows problems that cropped up packing the cargo, will make it difficult for NASA to maintain the Oct. 10 target date. The launch processing schedule between now and then includes no contingency time for dealing with problems that crop up outside regular prelaunch work.

You can watch crew arrival live here in The Flame Trench.

Led by veteran astronaut Scott Altman, the crew is due in between 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. and we'll be webcasting the event live. Simply click the upper lefthand photo, or the Live NASA TV box on the righthand side of the page, to launch our new-and-improved, wider-screen NASA TV viewer.

Joining Altman will be pilot Gregory "Ray J" Johnson, who locals will remember as the astronaut serving as manager of shuttle launch integration here at the spaceport as NASA readied its three-orbiter fleet for a return to flight after the Columbia accident.

The Atlantis mission specialists are John Grunsfeld, Drew Fuestel, Mike Massimino, Mike Good and Megan McArthur. McArthur will be prime robot arm operator on the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, which is tentatively scheduled for launch on Oct. 10.

The other four comprise two, two-man teams that will perform five consecutive days of spacewalking work to install two new science instruments on the observatory and attampt to resuscitate two others.

The spacewalkers also aim to equip Hubble with new nickel-hydrogen batteries and six new pointing control system gyroscopes -- gear that should enable the observatory to operate through at least 2013.

Grunsfeld and Fuestal make up one team; Massimino and Good the other.

The astronauts this coming week will take part in emergency training at launch pad 39A, where they will checkout the launch tower escape system -- a 1,200-foot metal slidewire that would whick the astronauts in metal baskets from the 195-foot-level of the tower to an emergency bunker on the western perimeter of the pad area.

The Atlantis crew will hold an informal media Q&A in that area at 9:40 a.m. Tuesday, and we'll be webcasting live NASA TV coverage of that event too.

A two-day practice countdown will pick up this week and involve both the Atlantis astronauts and the NASA Launch Control team.

In what amounts to a launch-day dress rehearsal, the astronauts will don partial-pressure launch-and-entry suits and board Atlantis at the pad early Wednesday for the last three hours of the practice countdown.