MIAMI — Mission managers tentatively cleared Atlantis on Wednesday for the space shuttle’s long-delayed flight to the international space station, the first of six shuttle liftoffs on NASA’s ambitious 2008 schedule.
Blastoff is scheduled for 2:47 p.m. Feb. 7 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The only concern at the moment is a bent air-conditioning hose discovered aboard Atlantis on Tuesday. Ground crews are examining it, said Wayne Hale, shuttle program manager for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but “I’m feeling very positive that we’ll come to a good conclusion on this.”
The craft and its seven astronauts have been grounded for two months as experts diagnosed and repaired an intermittently malfunctioning electrical connection between the shuttle and its external fuel tank.
McClatchy Newspapers
