CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- It's time to start building again.
Carrying a $600 million collection of wires, hoses and metal beams, shuttle Atlantis is set to blast off Thursday from the Kennedy Space Center on an International Space Station assembly mission that will mark the beginning of the next major phase of the frontier outpost's construction.
Known as the S-Zero (S0) truss, Atlantis' main cargo is a hexagon-shaped, girder-like object made up of 475,000 parts. It is to be attached to the top of the Destiny science module and will serve, literally, as the centerpiece structure through which all of the station's electrical power and other critical systems eventually will be distributed.
When combined with nine future segments -- two more trusses are scheduled for launch this year -- the entire thing will stretch more than the length of a football field and sport nearly an acre of electricity-generating solar arrays and heat dispelling radiator panels.
"It's the beginning of a very exciting time for us from an assembly standpoint as we put these major truss elements together," said Mike Suffredini, a NASA space station operations manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The mission -- NASA's 109th space shuttle launch and Atlantis' 25th flight -- also features the deployment and initial testing of a $190 million "railroad" designed to allow the station's Canadian robot arm to be transported along a track that extends the length of the truss. This mobile capability will facilitate future assembly operations.
To get everything securely bolted in place and properly wired during the planned 11-day mission, two pairs of spacewalking astronauts will be sent outside to work on the 17-story complex during four sorties that are each expected to last more than six hours.
And as if that weren't enough to make one shuttle mission interesting, among Atlantis' crew of seven astronauts is Jerry Ross, a respected 20-year space agency veteran who will become the first human in history to make seven trips into space.
But first Atlantis will have to get off the ground.
News Brownout
Liftoff remains on schedule for Thursday some time between 2 and 6 p.m. EST (1900 and 2300 GMT) but that's about the only thing NASA plans to say about the shot until 24 hours before Atlantis' main engines are fired up.
The reason: A new security policy recently adopted by NASA in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that restricts the civilian agency from releasing the exact launch time to the public until then.
As part of the directive, the exact itinerary of Atlantis' astronauts this week will be withheld and there will be no live coverage on NASA TV of the crew's traditional pre-flight meal, suiting up or departure for the launch pad. Instead, videotaped coverage of those events will be broadcast on NASA TV when the agency begins its launch day commentary three hours before liftoff, said NASA spokeswoman Lisa Malone.
By that time the crew will have arrived at the launch pad and should be boarding the shuttle.
From that point on, NASA will resume its traditional press protocols, fully releasing the usual information about the launch, mission and landing. However, if the flight is delayed more than 24 hours NASA officials say they will again keep the launch time a secret until the day before.
Critics say the clampdown on the exact launch time, while appropriate in its efforts to protect the astronauts and the shuttle launch team, is ultimately ineffective and ignores the fact that publicly available information from U.S. government sources -- including NASA's own Web site -- makes it possible to calculate the shuttle's launch time on missions to the space station.
Based on such information it is likely that Atlantis' launch time will be in the ballpark of 5:10 to 5:15 p.m. EST (1710 to 1715 GMT). In the event of a delay, the launch time will be about 24 minutes earlier each day.
Next page: A potential launch delay?
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