NASA is scheduled to launch Atlantis on Friday as its first space shuttle mission of the year, and there were no signs of bad weather or technical problems to delay it.Forecasters predicted an 80 percent chance that the weather would allow NASA to launch Atlantis at 7:38 p.m. (2338 GMT). Engineers were not working on any technical problems, Steve Payne, NASA test director, said Thursday.
A freak storm set back the mission in late February, when golf-ball-size hail knocked thousands of pockmarks in the insulating foam of Atlantis' external tank as it stood on the launch pad.
NASA managers chose to repair the tank rather than swap it out for another, and scores of engineers and technicians worked over two months to remove, sand down and reapply foam to the tank.
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