By Xinhua
Washington : U.S. space shuttle Atlantis successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday, kicking off a busy schedule of orbital work for the installation of the Columbus science laboratory.
The event occurred at 12:17 p.m. EST (1717 GMT), 342 kilometers above the Earth over the South Pacific Ocean. Guided by commander Stephen Frick, the 100-ton orbiter slowly and carefully pulled up to the ISS and latched on the Harmony module of the station at the rate of 6.1 centimeters per second.
The docking took place after Atlantis performed a successful orbital back-flip below the station to see if there is any damage to the space shuttle’s heat-resistant tiles.
After several delays in two months, the seven-crew Atlantis blasted off on Thursday from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on a mission to deliver the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory to the ISS.
Three spacewalks are scheduled during the 11-day mission focused on the installation of the science lab. The high-tech 10.3-ton cylinder, which costs 2 billion U.S. dollars, is as big as a small bus and will keep European astronauts busy for at least seven years with space-based experiments.
Faulty fuel gauges have forced the NASA to abort previous scheduled launches. A team of NASA engineers worked round the clock and through the holidays to fix the problem, which turned out to be a bad connector in the external tank.
The hard works paid off because all four fuel gauges checked out fine as the countdown entered its final few hours for Thursday’s liftoff.
The fuel gauges are said to be part of a critical system to ensure the safety of the main engines of the shuttle during its nine-minute launch into space.