THE DAY IN SPACE
__________________
Space News from SpaceRef:
— Counting Down to Atlantis’ Last Blast Off
CLICK HERE:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1389
“The Historic Countdown has officially begun for the last planned blast off of
Space Shuttle Atlantis. “
The clocks at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) began ticking down at 4 PM EDT today (Tuesday) from the T minus 43 hour mark towards a launch at:
2:20 PM
on
Friday, May 14,2010.
KSC launch controllers reported to their consoles at 3:30 PM for the formal “call-to-stations” at the Launch Control Center to initiate preparations for liftoff of the “STS 132 mission on Atlantis 32rd journey to the high frontier.”
Image above: Morning breaks over Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida following the arrival of space shuttle Atlantis. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
— ESA Giving a Spare Arm
to the Space Station
CLICK HERE: http://www.onorbit.com/node/2199
Image above: STS-132 Crew – Pictured clockwise from bottom are Commander Ken Ham, Mission Specialists Garrett Reisman and Michael Good, Pilot Tony Antonelli, and Mission Specialists Piers Sellers and Steve Bowen. Photo credit: NASA
“Space Shuttle Atlantis, ready for lift-off on Friday, will deliver important hardware from Europe to the International Space Station: spare portions of the European Robotic Arm and the first Russian payloads to use the arm. The European Robotic Arm (ERA) is the second ‘intelligent’ robot arm for the International Space Station (ISS). The first, used extensively for ISS assembly for almost 10 years, is Canadarm-2 – an iconic part of the ISS photos.”
