NASA's
shuttle Atlantis and its seven-astronaut crew are on track for a planned Dec. 6
launch to the International Space Station (ISS), mission managers said late
Friday.
Commanded
by veteran shuttle flyer Stephen Frick, Atlantis and its seven-astronaut crew
will launch Thursday at 4:31 p.m. EST (2131 GMT) to deliver the European-built Columbus laboratory to the ISS.
"Atlantis
is on the pad ready to go, with no major issues or concerns regarding that
vehicle," said NASA shuttle program manager Wayne Hale during a briefing at the
agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Atlantis'
STS-122 mission will mark NASA's fourth shuttle flight of 2007, the most in
a single year since the agency resumed orbiter flights after the 2003 Columbia tragedy, and comes after a packed month of construction work by the station's Expedition
16 astronauts. The three-person crew performed three
spacewalks in 15 days and some tricky robotic arm work to ready the station
and its new Harmony connecting module for the European Space Agency's Columbus lab.
"In my
mind, it's been an unprecedented year for us," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's
space shuttle program manager. "I will say, we always knew this particular
moment was going to be a challenging moment for us."
Delivered
by NASA's shuttle
Discovery last month, the Harmony module is designed to serve as the anchor
for Europe's Columbus module and Japan's massive, three-segment Kibo
laboratory, which will launch in stages next year to further expand the $100
billion space station.
Frick and
his STS-122 crewmates will perform at least three spacewalks during their
planned 11-day mission to install Columbus, replace ISS hardware and swap out
one member of the station's Expedition 16 crew.
If Atlantis'
power supplies hold out, NASA may extend the mission by two extra days and add
a fourth spacewalk to take another look at a balky rotational joint designed to
turn the station's starboard solar wings like a paddlewheel to track the sun. Previous
limited inspections by spacewalkers found the joint to be contaminated
with metallic grit, and engineers require additional data before they can
decide on a repair plan.
"With some
power downs, we can get a couple of extra days," Suffredini said. "During a [fourth
spacewalk] we'd do some thorough inspections of the solar array joint."
But if
Atlantis' power supplies can't support the extra spacewalk or its astronaut
crew grows too fatigued, the inspection could be shifted to later in the Expedition
16 mission, he added.
NASA plans
to launch some spare parts for the joint aboard Atlantis and another shuttle
set to launch in February to prepare for what could be a lengthy repair requiring
multiple spacewalks, mission managers said.
Engineers
also suspect that indications of a possible
air leak in seals between the station's Harmony and U.S. Destiny lab
are the result of instrumentation error. A series of tests this week, some of
which are still ongoing, have yet to turn up any sign of an actual leak.
"The data
suggests this leak does not exist," Suffredini said.
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