Historic last launch for shuttle

8 July 2011 Last updated at 15:30 GMT By Jonathan Amos BBC science correspondent, Kennedy Space Center The launch from Florida marks the 33rd for Atlantis and last for the fleet The 135th and final space shuttle mission has lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Space shuttle Atlantis was launched into history at 1129 local time (1529 GMT; 1629 BST) on Friday.

The 12-day mission will ferry 3.5 tonnes of supplies to the International Space Station.

Upon its return, the 30-year space shuttle programme will come to a close, with Atlantis and the other two shuttles retired to museums.

For much of the week, a launch had been thought highly unlikely.

The weather on Thursday had thrown torrential rain at the orbiter, and forecasters had been talking grimly of similar conditions developing on Friday.

But the promised showers never materialised and controllers in the "firing room" gave the "go" for the ascent after a positive poll from their ground teams.

The call prompted a huge cheer from the thousands of guests inside the Kennedy Space Center and a rush to grab the best viewing positions.

Many lined the tops of buildings around KSC; others went down by the famous countdown clock on the lawn in front of the press complex.

They, and hundreds of thousands more people outside the centre, did not see Atlantis for long.

A few seconds after thundering off the pad, she disappeared through a bank of cloud for the chase out over the Atlantic and a rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday.

The ship and her crew of four - Chris Ferguson, Doug Hurley, Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim - will spend seven days at the orbiting platform.

Mission goals include the delivery of a huge load of food for the ISS residents and a robotics facility that will test strategies for re-fuelling satellites high above the planet.

There has been much talk here in the past few days about the end of an era and the consequences it will have for the Kennedy workforce, many of whom will lose their jobs.

Nasa has attempted to shift the debate to what comes next and the strategy it has adopted to replace the expensive orbiter programme.

The agency believes a more affordable approach to getting astronauts to the ISS can be achieved by contracting out their transport to private companies.

One of those prospective commercial concerns, Boeing, has been displaying a model at KSC of a capsule it says could lift up to seven individuals to the station.

The four astronauts will help take supplies to the International Space Station

Another, the Sierra Nevada Corporation, signed an agreement with Nasa on Thursday to use Kennedy's facilities.

SNC is producing a mini-shuttle it calls the Dream Chaser, which, again, could carry up to seven astronauts into low-Earth orbit.

Nasa says this new policy will free resources to invest in a new spaceship and rocket that can take humans beyond the space station to destinations such as the Moon, asteroids and Mars.

The conical ship, known as Orion, has already been defined and is in an advanced stage of development. The rocket, on the other hand, is still an unknown quantity.

The US Congress has told the agency what its minimum capabilities ought to be. The agency is currently struggling to put those specifications into a concept it says can be built to the timeline and budget specified by the politicians. It promises to detail the rocket's baseline design before the summer is out.

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Storms could spoil shuttle launch

5 July 2011 Last updated at 17:07 GMT By Jonathan Amos BBC science correspondent, Florida It will be the 33rd and final launch of Atlantis The countdown to Friday's final launch of a space shuttle has begun at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

But the famous clock in front of the spaceport's press centre may struggle to get all the way down to zero.

Forecasters say showers and even storms will be over Florida's Space Coast by the week's end.

When it does fly, the Atlantis orbiter will be hauling more than 3.5 tonnes (8,000lb) of supplies to the International Space Station (ISS).

"I wish I had a better briefing for you," Nasa's shuttle weather officer Kathy Winters told reporters.

"Right now we are going with a 60% chance of KSC weather prohibiting launch due to the potential for showers and isolated thunderstorms in the area."

Huge crowds are expected on the Space Coast to watch the 1126 local time (1526 GMT) lift-off.

The forecast is going to make for some tough decisions on their part. Do they endure the jammed roads and long queues on Friday to get into the best viewing positions, only for the launch to be postponed? Or do they stay away, hoping for a 24-hour delay and much better weather prospects?

Saturday's forecast is better (40% chance of no-go weather conditions); Sunday's even more so (30%)

Winters said early morning conditions on Friday might be fine, but those showers and storms were likely to pop up just around launch time.

The crew arrived at Kennedy on Monday

Nasa will continue with its preparations in any case.

The start of the countdown triggers engineers to start working through a pre-planned list of final checks on the shuttle and its associated ground systems.

Nasa Test Director Jeremy Graeber said the team would get on with the job efficiently and would not be distracted by all the emotion swirling around them.

"The team gets into the mode of 'this is launch countdown'. And that's really the focus that everybody has, and the rest of the emotion that comes with the end of the space shuttle programme, I think will kind of roll in when launch is completed and we get past that."

If all goes according to plan, the order to start loading nearly two million litres of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the shuttle's external tank will go out at around 0200 local time on Friday morning. The crew will then suit up and make the drive down to the launch pad, leaving their quarters just after 0730.

Just four individuals will be flying on the mission. Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim have a busy 12 days in space ahead of them.

Their orbiter has been crammed full of stores, including a year's worth of food for the ISS.

It should give Nasa some room to play with if the new commercial re-supply freighters that are due to replace the shuttle encounter problems with their development.

Friday's ascent will be the 135th and last shuttle launch. It will be the 33rd lift-off for Atlantis.

On its return from orbit, the vehicle will be prepared for public display at the nearby Kennedy Space Center visitor complex.

The other two reusable spaceplanes in Nasa's fleet have already made their swansongs. Discovery completed its last mission on 9 March; Endeavour came home to retirement on 1 June.

It will be some years before the agency can use American systems again to launch astronauts. Private US companies are developing a range of vehicles but they are not expected to enter service until at least the middle of the decade.

Nasa itself intends to divert resources from the shuttle programme into designing a deep-space capsule that could visit the Moon, asteroids or even Mars.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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Final shuttle launch date fixed

28 June 2011 Last updated at 21:41 GMT By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News The final Atlantis mission will have a crew of four, led by Chris Ferguson (far left) The last launch of a US space shuttle will take place on Friday 8 July.

The Atlantis ship has the honour of closing out the 30-year orbiter programme and will lift off at 1126 Florida time (1526 GMT).

Up to 750,000 people are expected to line the roads and beaches around the Kennedy Space Center, all eager to witness a piece of history.

The launch date was fixed by US space agency managers on Tuesday following a review of mission preparations.

They passed as fit to fly a new fuel valve on one of the vehicle's main engines. The old valve was suspected to have a leak and was changed.

And inspections ordered on support beams on the ship's big orange external fuel tank found no issues of concern. Cracks in these structures were the cause of a major delay on a previous shuttle mission.

Four astronauts will ride Atlantis to orbit - Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim.

Their 12-day sortie will take them to the International Space Station (ISS), where they will deliver more than 3.5 tonnes (8,000lb) of supplies - including a year's worth of food. It will give the US space agency some room to play with as it looks to introduce a commercial cargo re-supply service over the next 12 months.

"This flight is incredibly important to space station; the cargo that is coming up is really mandatory," said Nasa's Associate Administrator for Space Operations, Bill Gerstenmaier.

A shuttle would normally fly with six or seven crew members onboard, but the number has been reduced for this final flight because there is no orbiter left on standby to go and rescue them should they to get into trouble.

In the event of Atlantis sustaining serious damage on lift-off, similar to the ill-fated Columbia ship in 2003, the astronauts would take refuge on the ISS until they could all return to Earth in Russian Soyuz capsules over a 10-month period.

On its return from space, Atlantis will be put on public display at the Kennedy Space Center visitor complex

The 8 July ascent will be the 135th shuttle launch and the 33rd of Atlantis.

In total, 355 individuals will have flown 852 times on those 135 missions since the very first shuttle flight on 12 April, 1981.

The five orbiters used over the course of the programme have flown 864,401,200km (537,114,016 miles) - a distance roughly similar to travelling from the Earth to the Sun and back three times.

Atlantis will add a further 6.5 million km (four million miles) to that total.

Reflecting on the significance of a final shuttle mission, Commander Ferguson said recently: "I don't think that the full magnitude of the moment will really hit us until the wheels have stopped on the runway.

"I'm not sure words will really be able to capture for the crew and for the entire shuttle workforce just how much the shuttle programme has meant to us for the last 30 years."

It has been an emotional few months for everyone connected with the programme - not least because many shuttle workers have lost their jobs in the wind-down. But Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach said everyone would stay focused on getting the 8 July launch done properly.

"Everyone that touches the vehicle is a true professional at the Kennedy Space Center, and throughout the programme," he told reporters.

"With that professionalism and their dedication to the programme over many, many years comes a commitment to do the job right. When the folks are doing their work on this amazing machine, I don't worry about it - I know they're going to do their job as perfectly as they have in the past."

Discovery was the first ship to complete its career in March, followed by Endeavour which landed one last time on 1 June.

The vehicles are all being retired to museums. Atlantis will end its days at the Kennedy Space Center visitor complex.

The final crew of space shuttle Discovery talk about their mission in March

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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