Atlantis shrugs off glitches for final launch
About one million sightseers lined highways and beaches around the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida, angling for a last glimpse of the iconic ship that has defined the US space programme for the last 30 years.
They were nearly disappointed, as cloudy skies and nearby rain threatened to delay Atlantis’s launch on a 12-day mission to the International Space Station.
But skies cleared just in time for lift-off, which was delayed for about three minutes by a last-minute technical glitch. It went ahead at 11.29am EDT (4.29pm Irish time).
The ship’s cargo of food and equipment is intended to bridge the gap until newly hired commercial freighters are ready to fly supply runs to the station.
The shuttle and its four-member veteran crew are scheduled to arrive at the station, a recently completed orbital research outpost, today.
NASA is ending the shuttle programme due to high operating costs.
Instead, the US will rely on Russia to fly its astronauts to the station, at a cost of more than $50 million (€35m) a seat.
The US space agency also plans to develop spaceships that can travel beyond the space station’s 220-mile orbit.
- LIMERICK Institute of Technology (LIT) celebrated a proud link with the historic final space shuttle mission as a post-graduate’s research was carried into space on board the Atlantis STS-135 from Kennedy Space Centre, Florida.
Fellow LIT post-graduate students of Gerard Newsham, from Corbally, Limerick, whose life science experiment to test hypergravity interactions between bacteria and plants was carried on board the historic flight, gathered with the institute’s Head of Department of Applied Science Michelle McKeon-Bennett at the college to witness the historic moment.
Speaking minutes after the launch, Newsham said: “It’s an incredible moment for me.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
