After a long Independence Day weekend off, Kennedy Space Center teams are back at work preparing to start the final countdown to a shuttle launch at 1 p.m. today. Atlantis and its crew of four astronauts, who arrived at Kennedy Monday, are scheduled to blast off at 11:26 a.m. Friday.
NASA will host a status briefing today at 10 a.m featuring Jeremy Graeber, NASA test director, Joe Delai, mission payload manager and Kathy Winters, shuttle weather officer. Click the NASA TV image at right to watch it live.
A preliminary launch weather forecast hadn't been released by 7 a.m.Launch teams plan to report to their consoles in Firing Room 4 of the Launch Control Center at 12:30 p.m.
After the three-day countdown begins, processing work today includes final vehicle and facility closeouts for launch, checkout of backup flight systems, avionics configuration, review of flight software and verification of flight system software in Atlantis' general purpose computers.
Atlantis will fly a minimum 12-day mission to the International Space Station to keep it stocked with food and supplies through next year.
1 comment:
Don't be too surprised when this launch is repeatedly delayed and reset for several different reasons - all of which will be flaws discovered just before the scheduled lift-off.
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