WASHINGTON — NASA hailed the flawless liftoff of space
shuttle Atlantis Monday, a space shot that marked the agency's fifth shuttle launch
of the year — a flight rate not seen since 2002, before the tragic Columbia
accident.
"This is a tremendous time in spaceflight," said
Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Space Operations. "This
last year we've had a very successful year."
Atlantis blasted
off at 2:28 p.m. EST (1928 GMT) from Kennedy Space Center in Cape
Canaveral, Fla., carrying six
astronauts and a slew of large spare supplies to the International Space
Station.
"The hardware was good to us; Atlantis is a good
machine," launch director Mike Leinbach said after the liftoff. Leinbach
credited the dedicated crew who worked on the reusable vehicle to turn it
around quickly after its May trip to the Hubble Space Telescope.
"It's just the love of the people doing the work,"
he said. "We could not do all this work if we didn't enjoy it."
Since 2005, when NASA resumed shuttle missions following the
loss of Columbia and its seven-astronaut crew in 2003, the agency has steadily
increased its flight rate while taking care not to shirk safety concerns.
In 2005, NASA launched one shuttle mission. Last year, the
agency launched four flights. The record for most shuttle flights in a single
year is nine, a benchmark NASA hit in 1985 before instituting new shuttle
safety inspection and repair methods.
The breakneck pace comes right as NASA is preparing to
wind down its shuttle program, with the three-orbiter fleet due to be
retired in about a year. NASA plans to replace the shuttle fleet with new
spacecraft and rockets by no earlier than 2015, though that plan is under
review by the White House.
Atlantis' STS-129 mission currently underway comes on the
heels of the first test launch of one of those new rockets, the Ares I, which lifted
off on a suborbital flight last month.
The STS-129 flight is Atlantis' second-to-last scheduled
voyage. It is NASA's 129th shuttle flight since the fleet debuted in 1981.
"It's starting to hit home, I have to admit to
you," Leinbach said of the impending end of the shuttle era. After this
flight, there are only five more shuttle missions planned. What comes next for
NASA is currently under review by the Obama administration.
Atlantis' trip helps pave the way for the retirement of the
space shuttles by supplying
the space station with two large carriers filled with spares to have on
hand if something breaks. Only shuttles have the cargo-carrying capacity to ferry
such huge supplies to space. The only other current spacecraft serving the
space station is the Russian Soyuz, which has much less room for cargo.
"There's no way with any other vehicle you could pack
these two carriers in a single mission," Gersteinmaier said.
Atlantis' STS-129 mission is the 31st launch of Atlantis and
the 31st shuttle visit to the International Space Station.
SPACE.com is providing complete coverage of Atlantis'
STS-129 mission to the International Space Station with Staff Writer Clara
Moskowitz in Washington, D.C. and Managing Editor Tariq Malik in New York. Click here for shuttle mission
updates and a link to NASA TV.
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