Space shuttle Atlantis in historic final lift-off
Baku, July 9 (AZERTAC). The 135th and final space shuttle mission has lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, according to BBC News.
Space shuttle Atlantis was launched into history at 1129 local time (1529 GMT; 1629 BST) on Friday.
The 12-day mission will ferry 3.5 tons of supplies to the International Space Station. Upon its return, the 30-year space shuttle program will come to a close, with Atlantis and the other two shuttles retired to museums.
For much of the week, a launch had been thought highly unlikely.
The weather on Thursday had thrown torrential rain at the orbiter, and forecasters had been talking grimly of similar conditions developing on Friday.
But the promised showers never materialized and controllers in the “firing room” gave the “go” for the ascent after a positive poll from their ground teams.
Launch director Mike Leinbach told the Atlantis crew - Chris Ferguson, Doug Hurley, Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim - to “have a little fun up there” with “a true American icon”.
Leinbach`s call prompted a huge cheer from the thousands of guests inside the Kennedy Space Center and a rush to grab the best viewing positions.
Many lined the tops of buildings around KSC; others went down by the famous countdown clock on the lawn in front of the press complex.
For a few moments, it seemed there might be a cruel disappointment when the count was suddenly stopped at 31 seconds to check equipment on the launch pad would not obstruct a clean get away by the orbiter. But once a safe situation was established, the count picked up again and Atlantis soon raced skyward.
The spectators inside KSC, and the hundreds of thousands more people outside the centre, did not see the orbiter`s climb for long.
Within a minute she had disappeared through a bank of cloud for the chase out over the Atlantic and a rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday.
The ship and her crew will spend seven days docked at the orbiting platform.
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