June 8 will be the date that engineers and astronauts of space shuttle Atlantis would have been waiting for. Managers at the space agency have announced that the first shuttle of this year will be launched on June 8.
The decision was taken after a two-day meeting at the Kennedy Space Center. The officials at NASA have informed that the shuttle will be launched at 7:38 p.m. ET on a mission to deliver a new pair of solar arrays to the International Space Station.
Officials at NASA have also stated that the team is really pumped up as they have been waiting for this from the last three months. The shuttle which was originally scheduled to be launched in March was delayed when it was hit by a severe hailstorm while on the launch pad. The hailstorm damaged the insulating foam on the external fuel tank of the shuttle.
NASA managers have remained cautious about the insulating foam as this was the reason for the sad incident of space shuttle Columbia in which all seven astronauts were killed on their way back home.
The hailstorm forced NASA engineers to remove Atlantis from the launch pad and repair all the thousands of gashes in the tank’s foam. They stated that now they are fully confident that the all damages have been catered and the shuttle is good for launch. The final polling of managers was unanimous to go ahead with the launch attempt.
Originally NASA had planned to launch five shuttles this year, but the delay of Atlantis has altered the number from five to four and also pushed back the flight schedule for the rest of the year.
The crew of Atlantis has also been altered as Astronaut Clayton Anderson has been added to the original six member crew. Anderson will be replacing Sunita Williams on the space station. Sunita Williams was scheduled to return to Earth aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour, launch of which has been delayed from early July to late August.
Via: usatoday
