NASA Starts Fueling Atlantis For Afternoon Launch At KSC

NASA is gassing shuttle Atlantis up for what is expected to be its grand finale, an International Space Station assembly and outfitting mission slated to blast off from Kennedy Space Center at 2:20 p.m.

NASA engineers in Firing Room 4 of the Launch Control Center started the process of loading more than 500,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the shuttle's 15-story external tank at 4:55 a.m. The propellant-loading operation will take about three hours to complete.

The Atlantis astronauts got a wake-up call at 5 a.m. and will spend the next several hours getting ready for their big day. At 10 a.m., the astronauts will start donning launch-and-entry suits and then 30 minutes later, they will depart crew quarters at the KSC Operations and Checkout Building and head to launch pad 39A.

The crew will arrive at the pad and begin the boarding process about 11 a.m. The ship's hatch is to be closed for flight at 12:15 p.m.

The weather forecast calls for a 70 percent chance of acceptable conditions for launch. The only concern is a slight chance that clouds might build over the shuttle runway. In that case, mission commander Ken Ham might be unable to see the concrete strip during an emergency landing. So that would be a "no-go" condition.