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 CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - NASA managers announced Thursday that they would press ahead with the first space shuttle launch of the year next week, three months later than originally planned because of a hail storm that pockmarked the spacecraft's external tank.
After a two-day meeting at the Kennedy Space Center, NASA officials agreed to launch Atlantis at 7:38 p.m. EDT June 8 on a mission to deliver a new pair of solar arrays to the international space station.
"The team is really pumped to get this done this time," said Mike Leinbach, NASA launch director. "We've been doing three months of down time due to the hail storm."
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