CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Space shuttle Atlantis sliced a rainbow-streaked arc through the dusk as it lifted off Wednesday toward space station Alpha with the $1.38 billion U.S. Destiny laboratory module.
The 6:13 p.m. launch left observers awestruck. "The shadow of the plume crossed in front of the moon," said Mike Leinbach, shuttle launch director.
The job of the five-member crew is to attach and activate the lab - the station's scientific centerpiece during three challenging space walks Saturday, Monday and Wednesday. The mission is scheduled to last 11 days.As they were getting seated into the shuttle, astronaut Tom Jones held up a sign to his family saying, "Liz, Annie, + Bryce I love you! Be home soon!" Astronaut Bob Curbeam held a sign up for his wife that said, "Happy birthday, Julie!"
Other crew members on the 102nd shuttle flight are commander Ken Cockerel, pilot Mark Polansky and astronaut Marsha Ivins, who is making her fifth flight.
No American woman has ever made more than five space flights.
Ivins' job is to maneuver the 16-ton lab out of the shuttle's cargo bay with the shuttle's robotic arm and attach it to the station on Saturday. The rest of the space walks will be devoted to making necessary connections between the lab and the station and outfitting the lab.
"It would be hard to be more excited than we are right now," NASA's lab manager, Jon Cowart, said before the launch. "We are ready to go."One issue that posed a concern for the launch was bad weather at some emergency landing sites in Spain and Morocco earlier in the day. Two sites cleared up in time, however.
Another problem crept up during a built-in 45-minute hold with nine minutes remaining on the countdown clock.
An information switchboard near the shuttle's main engines in the auxiliary power units experienced a change in electrical voltage. No other systems were affected, so NASA decided to launch, after a two-minute delay.
Now that the ship is safely in low orbit, its next task is to catch up to space station Alpha soaring 230 miles above Earth. The two spacecraft are scheduled to dock Friday.
In the meantime, the station crew prepared for the shuttle's arrival. They will detach a Russian Progress cargo vehicle today to make room for the orbiter. The cargo vehicle, filled with trash, will burn up in the atmosphere.
"Good work to the Atlantis crew and all the folks at the Cape," station commander Bill Shepherd said after the crew reached orbit. "It was a great day in space history."
The shuttle mission is crucial to the future of the international manned outpost because, in addition to housing most of the science experiments, the laboratory will be the station's nervous system, providing more computer software than any other mission. The station eventually will cost between $60 billion and $95 billion by the time it is completed in 2006.
The lab, shaped like a can, will add 40 percent more living space for the station's three-man crew. Currently, the station crew has three living modules: the Unity node, the Zvezda service module and the Zarya command module. Since the lab is flying without most of its equipment inside, the crew will temporarily use a lot of the lab space for stowage.
The addition of this 28-foot-long module will make the space station larger than all its predecessors, the Russian Mir and Salyuts and the American Skylab.
Managers will begin the gradual process of shifting primary station control from Moscow to Houston once Destiny is connected to the Unity module.
The additional station segments waiting at KSC for delivery to the station depend on the proper installation of the laboratory.
"What happens on one mission directly impacts the next mission," Bill Gerstenmaier, the station's deputy program manager, said before launch. "So it's really important as we go through these steps that they all interact and they all interplay with each other and they all work well."
For example, the Atlantis crew is supposed to add a fixture to the outside of the lab after it is attached to the station. To that fixture, the following shuttle mission will add the station's own robotic arm. The following shuttle mission is to bring a large airlock, which needs to be attached to the station by that arm. And so on.
There is no back-up segment for the laboratory. From beginning concept to now, it took engineers up to 15 years to complete it.
In addition to the lab, the shuttle is carrying a set of experiments from high school students around the country, including some from Eau Gallie High School in Melbourne.
Atlantis is slated to return to KSC on Feb. 18.
Published under license from FLORIDA TODAY. Copyright © 2001 FLORIDA TODAY. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any way without the written consent of FLORIDA TODAY.
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