You don’t see this too often: two space shuttles on neighbouring launch pads at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Atlantis is being primed for the fourth Hubble Space Telescope repair mission on 10 October, while Endeavour is being readied as a lifeboat in case Atlantis becomes crippled in orbit.
In most cases, the International Space Station acts as a safe haven for the crew if anything goes awry with the shuttle. But the ISS orbits at an altitude 250 kilometres lower than Hubble. “So if something should malfunction in Atlantis, like a loss of oxygen or re-entry guidance fuel,…
