Monday, the much delayed launch of the space shuttle Atlantis will go underway. With all the preparations working on schedule, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson (test director for NASA) states that all factors are working well and that the space shuttle should launch at 2:01 p.m. ET from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

If anything should delay this launch, there are three possible launch days that spread from Monday to Wednesday. But with this launch being delayed several times before, it is highly probable that all the conditions that can be controlled will be ensured.

The Atlantis mission is planned to go for 11 days during which the seven members of the team will work at repairing and upgrading the Hubble telescope. The mission includes five spacewalks that will ensure Hubble’s capabilities will be improved and that its lifetime will be extended at least through 2014.

So far, the mission was delayed a year. The initial plan was that Atlantis will launch in May 2008 but various reasons led to the delay until October 2008 when the problems with a major science instrument imposed a delay until Monday, May 11, 2009. This will be the fifth and last visit Hubble will receive in 19 years of service.

Though there have been rumors regarding the fact that Hubble is outdated and that it is no longer working at its best, David Lectrone (Hubble project manager) stated that when this mission is completed, “It will never have been better, and it’s at the apex of its operations.”

After the Columbia incident when a wing damage that took place at liftoff led to the complete loss of the shuttle and its crew in 2003, NASA has placed a “safety” solution. A second shuttle will be ready to launch if an emergency occurs. Regularly, the international space stations serves as an emergency “backup”, but the mission to Hubble will set Atlantis on a different orbit, from which the space station will be unreachable.

The Atlantis will be among the last missions the shuttle program will perform. There are still nine left, but all of these are scheduled to be completed by the end of 2010. While after the Columbia incident took place, NASA Administrator at that time, Sean O’Keefe originally stopped the shuttle program, Michael Griffin felt that the program can still perform a number of missions. A new generation of manned spacecraft will take the place of the shuttles in the next years.