NASA clears shuttle for launch attempt Wednesday

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla, Sep 5 (Reuters) NASA managers have cleared space shuttle Atlantis for a launch attempt tomorrow after a week's delay due to a lightning strike and a storm, officials with the US space agency said.

Atlantis' liftoff is targeted for 12:29 pm 10cal time tomorrow at the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida. Managers are also prepared to make launch attempts on Thursday and Friday if the weather or technical problems prevent liftoff tomorrow.

''We feel like we are in very good shape,'' said Kennedy Space Center launch manager LeRoy Cain, who told a briefing that NASA's mission management team had cleared the space shuttle for the launch attempt.

It will be NASA's first mission to restart construction of the half-built, 100 billion dollar International Space Station since before the 2003 Columbia disaster.

''The wait's nearly over,'' said Jeff Spaulding, a NASA launch director at the Kennedy Space Center.

NASA had planned to launch Atlantis and its six-member crew last week, but a lightning strike at the launch pad and then high winds from Tropical Storm Ernesto kept the winged spacecraft grounded.

Meteorologists yestrday predicted an 80 percent chance the weather would be acceptable for launch.

Atlantis' primary payload, one of the heaviest ever for a shuttle, is a 372 million dollar space station truss segment that contains a pair of power-producing solar arrays.

''We are into the heart of the (station) assembly and we certainly have our fingers crossed that things are going to go very well,'' said shuttle program manager Wayne Hale.

The equipment was to have been installed in 2003, but NASA stopped flying the space shuttles after losing shuttle Columbia and its seven astronauts on February. 1, 2003. The spaceship broke apart as it headed toward landing because its heat shield had been damaged by falling foam insulation during launch.

The agency has since flown two test flights to check equipment redesigns that cleared the way for Atlantis to resume space station assembly.

NASA has just four years to finish work on the research outpost because the shuttles -- the only vehicles designed to carry the station's major components to orbit -- are due to be retired in 2010.

REUTERS DH PM0427