Post date: Feb 23, 2011 10:50:54 PM
NASA clears Shuttle Discovery for its long-delayed and final space mission to the International Space Station scheduled for Thursday. Problems with the ship's fuel tank have kept the mission on hold since November.
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES NASA - NASA will launch the first of three final space shuttle missions on Thursday (February 24), sending the shuttle Discovery on its last flight on a long-delayed cargo run to the International Space Station, officials said on Friday.
The shuttle will carry a six-member crew, who arrived at Cape Canaveral, Florida for their final voyage aboard the ship earlier this week.At a pre-launch news conference mission managers gave the shuttle an unanimous "go."
"We're ready to fly STS-133. We've been ready for a mission standpoint for quite a while and now our hardware is in line and ready to go," said Mike Moses, mission management team chair.
The shuttle's payload manager Scott Higginbotham described the final launch as an "exercise in patience."
"We are anxious to finally see our hard work close to flying in space and being put to use on the International Space Station," Higginbotham said.
Liftoff of the Discovery, NASA's senior spaceship, is targeted for Thursday at 4:50 p.m. (2150 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center.
Problems with the ship's fuel tank have kept the mission on hold since November. An unrelated hydrogen leak forced NASA to cancel a launch attempt on Nov. 5.
Technicians then discovered a crack in the insulating foam that covers the shuttle's fuel tank, a potentially serious safety issue.
The shuttle will be carrying an Italian-made storage room that will be added to the $100 billion space station, a project of 16 nations nearing completion after 12 years of construction.
The shuttle also will deliver food, science equipment and supplies for the six crew members aboard the station and a prototype humanoid robot.
Two spacewalks are planned during Discovery's weeklong stay at the station.
The 30-year-old shuttle program is ending due to high operating costs and to free up funds to develop rockets and spaceships that can fly beyond the station's 220-mile-high (355-km) orbit.