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Astronauts safely in space, ready for work
CAPE CANAVERAL – Catapulted into space Saturday, a shuttle commander from Fort Lauderdale now is poised to lead his crew of orbital construction workers as they resume building the space station — a rest stop along the highway of exploration.
”Any time you take off on an exploration, typically you take steps in a gradual nature,” Brent Jett Jr., a former football player at Northeast High, said during a recent NASA interview. “It’s human nature to want to explore and I hope that the United States leads that effort.”
Moments before blastoff, sitting atop powerful rockets with his back toward the ground and his eyes peering into space, Jett added: “It was worth the wait and we’re ready to get to work.”
And then, roaring from Launch Pad 39B, knifing through a summer morning at the Kennedy Space Center, shuttle Atlantis finally carried Jett and five other astronauts safely into orbit.
Blastoff was delayed for 13 days by Tropical Storm Ernesto, other weather-related issues, a troublesome power cell and a malfunctioning fuel sensor.
But the sky was mostly blue Saturday, the wind light, and at last came the final countdown.
”Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, three main engines up and burning, two, one and . . .liftoff of space shuttle Atlantis, opening a new chapter in the completion of the International Space Station,” said NASA launch commentator George Diller.
Engineers said all appeared normal — as normal as anything can seem 143 miles above Earth after an eight-minute thrill ride through the atmosphere aboard a spaceship powered by millions of pounds of fuel.
NASA said a preliminary look at taped replays of the launch found no sign of significant impacts on the shuttle by insulation debris, the issue that doomed shuttle Columbia and its seven astronauts in 2003.
Source : http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/15479940.htm