SHUTTLE FLIGHT LAUNCH WITH GODWIN ABOARD DELAYED UNTIL FRIDAY

The launch of space shuttle Atlantis with Oak Ridge astronaut Linda Godwin aboard has been postponed until Friday because of high winds at the Kennedy Space Center's shuttle landing facility in Florida.

The shuttle had been scheduled to launch at 2:35 a.m. today for a nine-day mission to link up with the Russian space station Mir.

NASA officials say the weather forecast improves dramatically for a Friday launch attempt.

On the sixth day of the mission Godwin is scheduled to take the first spacewalk by a U.S. astronaut while the shuttle is attached to the Russian space station.

This will be Godwin's third space shuttle flight.

Several people from Southeast Missouri, including her parents, James and Maxine Godwin of Oak Ridge, and her Jackson high school physics teacher, Ed Sebaugh, headed to Florida to watch the shuttle launch.

The flight is the third of

nine planned space shuttle-Mir link-ups between 1995 and

1998, including rendezvous, docking and crew transfers that

will pave the way toward assembly of the International Space Station beginning in November 1997.

On the sixth day of the mission, Godwin and astronaut Richard Clifford are

scheduled to perform a six-hour spacewalk while Atlantis is

docked to Mir. They will attach four experiments

individually onto handrails situated on the Mir Docking

Modules.

The experiments, collectively referred to as the

Mir Environmental Effects Payload, are designed to

help characterize the space environment at a 51.6-degree

inclination, the same inclination at which the International

Space Station will be built. The experiments will be

retrieved during a spacewalk 18 months later.

Godwin and

Clifford also will work with common U.S.-Russian hardware

such as safety tethers and foot restraints and will retrieve

a video camera mounted on Mir. This represents one

in a series aimed at testing equipment and procedures that

may be implemented during assembly and maintenance of the

International Space Station

.

Astronaut Shannon Lucid, who is flying in

space for the fifth time, will remain aboard the Mir

station after Atlantis undocks, becoming the first American

woman to serve as a Mir crew member. She will remain aboard

the orbiting station until Atlantis again docks to Mir in

early August.