Astronauts arrive for space shuttle launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The seven-man crew assigned to the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis' upcoming mission to the International Space Station arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on Monday in preparation for Friday's planned liftoff.

The shuttle is scheduled to launch at 7:38 p.m. EDT/0038 Saturday GMT from its seaside launch pad in Florida.

"It's great to be down here in Florida," said commander Frederic Sturckow, 45, who has made two previous flights on the shuttle.

The crew includes four rookies -- pilot Lee Archambault, 46, flight engineer Steven Swanson, 46, spacewalker John "Daniel" Olivas, 41, and astronaut Clayton Anderson, 48, who will become a member of the resident space station crew.

Anderson is replacing station flight engineer Sunita Williams, 41, who has been aboard the $100 billion orbital outpost since December.

Also aboard Atlantis will be spacewalkers Patrick Forrester, 50, a veteran of one previous flight, and James Reilly, 53, who will be making his third voyage into space.

Initially, NASA had planned to be flying its second mission of the year, not the first, in June.

A freak storm in February, however, pelted Atlantis with hailstones and damaged its fuel tank. The shuttle was returned to its processing hangar for repairs, delaying the flight by three months.

"We spent a long time training for this mission," Sturckow said. "As you know, we had a little bit of a setback. We flew by the launch pad on our way here and (the shuttle) looks great."

Atlantis is expected to spend a week at the space station so crewmembers can install another set of power-producing solar wings.

The outpost, a project of 16 nations, is about half-finished. Construction was interrupted by the 2003 Columbia accident and is now scheduled for completion in 2010.

NASA will be fighting the clock to get it finished in time, as the space shuttles, the only vehicles designed to haul the large components into space and assemble them, will be retired in three years.

Despite the delays in launching Atlantis, NASA insists it has ample time to finish the 16 missions on schedule, including a final servicing call to the Hubble Space Telescope.

The U.S. space agency is keeping an eye on a possible labor union strike against its prime shuttle contractor, United Space Alliance, which has been called for after Friday's launch of Atlantis.

The company, however, has assured NASA that even if the strike by the International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers occurs, it will not affect the shuttle program. United Space Alliance is a 50-50 joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing.

The union represents 570 shuttle workers at the Kennedy Space Center.