NASA is readying Atlantis for one last attempt to launch before the window closes. If the shuttle does not go today, it will be several weeks or more before another opportunity.
NASA stopped Friday's launch try only 45 minutes before its scheduled launch. This time it was a faulty fuel tank sensor — the same glitch that thwarted two previous missions. The launch delay cost NASA $616,000.
The shuttle's external fuel tanks were filled as scheduled in about 3 hours Saturday morning, exhibiting no problems with any sensor. Weather continued to look favorable, with only a 20 percent chance of storms interfering.
"Hi Mom," astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper said, waving to a television camera as she and her five crew mates finished dressing in their orange flightsuits. They were they driven to the launch pad in a specially equipped van.
From the space station 220 miles above Earth, astronaut Jeff Williams inquired how launch preparations were going.
"Hopefully, we'll have some visitors heading on their way to you before long," Mission Control in Houston told him.
Atlantis, which was supposed to launch on its 11-day mission on Aug. 27, has been kept earthbound by a lightning strike to the launch pad, Tropical Storm Ernesto, a glitch with a 30-year-old motor in an electricity-generating fuel cell, and finally the fuel tank sensor error. Originally the mission was scheduled for May 2003 but was first postponed by the 2003 Columbia accident.
This has been pretty bumpy, hasn't it?
