Cape Canaveral (Florida): NASA makes its fifth attempt to get Atlantis off the launch pad at 11:15 am EDT. If the mission is scrubbed again, the space agency must abandon for a few weeks efforts to send the shuttle off on a construction mission at the International space station.
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 three hours Saturday morning, exhibiting no problems with any sensor. Weather continued to look favorable, with only a 20 per cent chance of storms interfering.
Atlantis, which was supposed to launch on its 11-day mission on August 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.
Saturday is the last time NASA has to launch Atlantis before it has to go to the back of the line, behind a Russian Soyuz capsule that is slated for liftoff September 18 on a flight to the space station.
Both Atlantis and the Soyuz cannot be at the space station at the same time.
If Atlantis cannot lift off on Saturday, it will have to wait at least until late September — and even then, NASA will have to waive a post-September 11 rule that says launches must be conducted in daylight so that the spaceship can be photographed for signs of damage.
Friday's launch was scrubbed because a sensor in the hydrogen fuel tank gave an abnormal reading during a test as the shuttle was being fueled.
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