Space Shuttle Full Coverage on Yahoo! News
My husband David and I watched the launch live just now – as they neared a critical point in the ascent, the voice from Mission Control said “You are go for throttle up.” David commented “I hate that phrase.” But all went well, and they’re safely in orbit. Whew.
The Chicago Tribune adds:
On the ground, NASA kept an eye on several cameras zoomed in on Atlantis as the shuttle streaked into space for any signs of hard foam breaking off its large external fuel tank, the problem that doomed Columbia.
A preliminary review of the launch showed no indication of major foam loss before Atlantis separated from its external fuel tank and NASA declared its crew safely in space. The fuel cells that had forced launch delays earlier this week were working as expected, NASA spokesman Kyle Herring said.
Atlantis carried one of the heaviest payloads ever launched into space — a 17 ton truss section that will be added to the half-built space station. It includes two solar arrays that will produce electricity for the orbiting outpost.
The astronauts will make three spacewalks during the 11-day flight to install the $372 million addition.
Later on, we’ll go looking for the video footage that didn’t get shown in the webcast – this time, we’ll see if we can watch from the external fuel tank camera as it re-enters the atmosphere and crashes into the ocean. We watched the solid fuel booster rocket cameras before, courtesy of a link via ***Dave.
When they load the fuel tank video, it’ll probably be at the NASA Multimedia page, where I just watched the video of the astronauts taking their seats from this morning. The Canadian flag patch is clearly visible on the arm of Steven G. MacLean, mission specialist, which makes me think of the other Atlantis. More information on the crew
and mission here.
Ginny, did you mean to substitute all references to Atlantis with “Stargate: Atlantis” (complete iwth links)?
No. It’s the dang macro I have that converts that particular word to a link to the television show. I didn’t anticipate the possibility that I might actually post about a certain space shuttle. :blush: