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Atlantis To Launch On Final Space Mission In June

WASHINGTON (CBS4) – A third shuttle flight has been added to the final space shuttle launches at NASA.

The space agency announced Thursday that the Space Shuttle Atlantis will launch June 28 on its final mission to take supplies to the International Space Station and return a faulty pump.

That will be the third mission before the shuttle fleet retires this year.

Other launch dates include Feb. 24 when Space Shuttle Discovery is expected to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in order to deliver the Express Logistics Carrier-4, a permanent multipurpose module, and critical spare parts to the International Space Station; April 19 is the target date to launch the Space Shuttle Endeavour that will take the Express Logistics Carrier-3 and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the space station.

Although NASA added the flight, it indicated that the money to pay for it is still up in the air as the Obama administration and Congress agreed to the extra flight, but Congress has not yet given NASA the few hundred million needed to make it happen.

(©2011 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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