The five-member Atlantis had some bad news on Wednesday morning. The weather forecasters gave the launch site a 40 per cent chance of launch guideline-violating rain and cloud. And then there was the earthquake in California.
The Kennedy Space Center wasn't the only place which had to be in tip-top working order for a launch to go ahead. The launch depended on many sites far away from Florida. These included Edwards Air Force Base in California, where the shuttle was due to land on Monday. They also included other sites, often military bases, which were essential for shuttle tracking and other mission support. One of these sites was a tracking station at Onizuka Air Force Base at Sunnyvale, California. The earthquake which ripped through the Bay area had damaged the tracking station and senior NASA decision-makers planned to meet on Wednesday morning to consider the Sunnyvale situation. Still, the space agency maintained a calm, cool exterior. Regardless of the technical problems, the court challenges and the protesters, the whimsical weather, the natural disasters, and the WANK worm, NASA was still in control of the situation.
`There's been some damage, but we don't know how much. The sense I get is it's fairly positive,' a NASA spokesman told UPI. `But there are some problems.'16 In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Rick Oborn reassured the public again, `They are going to be able to handle shuttle tracking and support for the mission … They will be able to do their job'.17
Atlantis waited, ready to go, at launchpad 39B. The technicians had filled the shuttle up with rocket fuel and it looked as if the weather might hold. It was partly cloudy, but conditions at Kennedy passed muster.
The astronauts boarded the shuttle. Everything was in place.
But while the weather was acceptable in Florida, it was causing some problems in Africa, the site of an emergency landing location. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. NASA ordered a four-minute delay.
Finally at 12.54 p.m., Atlantis boomed from its launchpad. Rising up from the Kennedy Center, streaking a trail of twin flames from its huge solid-fuel boosters, the shuttle reached above the atmosphere and into space.
At 7.15 p.m., exactly 6 hours and 21 minutes after lift-off, Galileo began its solo journey into space. And at 8.15 p.m., Galileo's booster ignited.
Inside shuttle mission control, NASA spokesman Brian Welch announced,
`The spacecraft Galileo … has achieved Earth escape velocity'.18
Monday, 30 October 1989
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland