"Go" for Tanking

Mon, 11 May 2009 04:43:07 -0500

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, valves are open and about 500,000 gallons of chilled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen are flowing into space shuttle Atlantis' external fuel tank at Launch Pad 39A. The "tanking" process, as it is known, began at 4:41 a.m. EDT after the Mission Management Team gave the go-ahead to proceed. Liftoff remains on schedule for 2:01 p.m. EDT. The launch weather forecast remains 90 percent favorable.