Countdown begins for US-Europe space mission

0 Comments | AFP, February, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The crew of the US shuttle Atlantis readied Tuesday for this week's delayed mission to deliver a European space laboratory to the orbiting International Space Station.

Lift-off, originally scheduled for December, now is set for Thursday after a two-month delay, while engineers got to the bottom of electrical faults with fuel gauges on the shuttle's external fuel tank.

"Atlantis is ready to go fly," Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, assistant NASA test director, told reporters Monday, when the crew arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida for the launch.

Mission Commander Steve Frick and Pilot Alan Poindexter on Tuesday practiced landing maneuvers on a Gulfstream business jet outfitted to mimic the space shuttle.

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