Mon, Nov 16, 2009
Atlantis Launch Called "Flawless"
Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off
for a mission to ISS at 1428 Monday afternoon, in what NASA called
a "Flawless" launch.
"What a great way to start this mission," said Bill
Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations. "I
can't say enough about the teams that got this vehicle ready to
fly."
Gerstenmaier congratulated the teams and the work they
accomplished preparing the payload and vehicle for this complex and
ambitious mission. "We still have a tough mission in front of us
… but it (the shuttle) looked really, really good,"
Gerstenmaier continued.
Mike Moses, mission management team chairman, remarked that the
launch ended up being picture-perfect after a low-layer of clouds
settled over the center for the first few hours of the countdown.
"As a management team we had no issues of any note to talk about,"
Moses said. "It (the countdown) was nice and quiet and
smooth."
"We had a great countdown today," said Mike Leinbach, shuttle
launch director. He said Atlantis broke the record for the lowest
problems reported, previously held by space shuttle Discovery.
"It's due to the team and the hardware processing. They just did a
great job."
NASA Photo
The record will probably never be broken again in the history of
the Space Shuttle Program, so congratulations to them," Leinbach
continued.
Leinbach also honored the midbody team with an award for the
processing of Atlantis' payload bay, which included the turnaround
"down-processing" after the return of Atlantis from the Hubble
Space Telescope servicing mission. He said they did an outstanding
job and they deserved their award today.
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