The weather looked favorable for Wednesday's launch of the space shuttle Atlantis on a mission to resume construction of the International Space Station for the first time since 2003, NASA officials said on Tuesday, according to Reuters. The forecast had worsened slightly from Monday, but officials saw only a 30-percent chance of a delay due to clouds and possible rain around the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida at takeoff time. "Everybody on the team is 'go' and in good spirits," Kennedy Space Center shuttle manager LeRoy Cain told a briefing on Tuesday morning. "We're ready to press ahead." Managers at the U.S. space agency planned to reconvene at 1:45 a.m. EDT (0545 GMT) on Wednesday to make a final decision about whether to fuel the shuttle for a launch attempt at 12:29 p.m. (1629 GMT) NASA can try to launch Atlantis and its six-member crew on Thursday or Friday if weather or technical problems postpone Wednesday's liftoff. The mission was to have begun last week but was delayed after a lightning strike on the shuttle's seaside launch pad and a storm. The Atlantis mission will be the first dedicated to expanding the half-built, $100 billion International Space Station since the space shuttle Columbia exploded in 2003. Construction of the station, a multinational effort led by the United States and Russia, began in 1998. The space station is still operating on temporary power and cooling systems, which support a U.S. science laboratory, a connecting node, two airlocks, living quarters, a fuel storage module, five pieces of structural truss and other equipment. More than a dozen major components are awaiting rides on the shuttles, the only vehicles designed to haul them into orbit. Atlantis' payload bay is filled with a 17.5-tonne double truss segment containing a pair of solar arrays expected to double the electricity available for the station's systems and equipment. NASA needs the additional power for laboratories built by the European Space Agency and Japan set to launch beginning next year. Before the labs are installed, NASA must finish the station's truss, and add two more sets of solar arrays in addition to the one being delivered aboard Atlantis. Astronauts also are being tapped for a massive rewiring of the station's power and cooling systems. "This is clearly a very complicated task," shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said. "It's very difficult to compare it to moonwalks or other things we have done in the past," Hale added. "Clearly these are the most complicated spacewalk and assembly tasks that have ever been done before." NASA is racing the clock with just three shuttles to finish assembling the space station before the winged spacecraft are retired in 2010. The U.S. agency lost Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003, in an accident that claimed the lives of seven astronauts. Instead of the expensive and labor-intensive shuttles, NASA wants to return to flying capsules launched aboard expendable rockets that can travel to the station as well as the moon.
