Video: Preparing Delta 2 and SMAP for flight

This narrated footage shows the preparations that shuttle Atlantis and the mission payloads underwent at Kennedy Space Center for launch on STS-135 to the International Space Station.

Installation of the Delta 2 rocket’s nose cone was completed Tuesday in the cleanroom of Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex 2 gantry as preparations continue for the SMAP mission’s liftoff next Thursday.

Engineers have so far been unable to restart a balky radar aboard NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive environmental satellite launched in January, robbing scientists of the most detailed maps of how much water is locked up in the top layers of Earth’s land masses.