Despite some concerns about potential weather delays, the space shuttle Atlantis left Florida’s Kennedy Space Center this afternoon on its way to the International Space Station for an 11-day mission. The crew of six astronauts and the hundreds of staffers on the ground set a record for the fewest number of problems reported leading up to (and during) the launch sequence.

As always, there’s plenty to do over at NASA’s website. You can see photos and video from today’s launch, read about the mission, or even check out bios of each of the astronauts on board.

Atlantis and its crew will be dropping off more than 30,000 pounds of equipment and experiments at the International Space Station for use on future missions. The crew will be in space through the Thanksgiving holiday — although NASA says no special Turkey dinners are on the menu for the men and women of Atlantis. The closest they’ll get is a rehydratable pouch of turkey tetrazzini. Mmmmmm… just like mom used to make.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Notes from Dom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.