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The Mission




Rocket: Proton M with Breeze M upper stage
Payload: Hot Bird 8
Date: Aug. 4, 2006
Time: 2148 GMT (5:48 p.m. EDT)
Site: Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
Satellite feed: Intelsat Americas 6, Transponder 11, C-band, 93° West




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Atlantis on the pad
Space shuttle Atlantis is delivered to Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39B on August 2 to begin final preparations for blastoff on the STS-115 mission to resume construction of the International Space Station.

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Atlantis rollout begins
Just after 1 a.m. local time August 2, the crawler-transporter began the slow move out of the Vehicle Assembly Building carrying space shuttle Atlantis toward the launch pad.

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STS-34: Galileo launch
The long voyage of exploration to Jupiter and its many moons by the Galileo spacecraft began on October 18, 1989 with launch from Kennedy Space Center aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. The crew of mission STS-34 tell the story of their flight to dispatch the probe -- fitted with an Inertial Upper Stage rocket motor -- during this post-flight presentation film.

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BY JUSTIN RAY

Follow the countdown and launch of the Russian Proton rocket carrying the Hot Bird 8 communications satellite. Reload this page for the very latest on the mission.