As Spirits Fly With Atlantis, Delays a Mir Inconvenience : Space: The shuttle pierces a blue sky after Florida storms scratched two launch dates. Linkup with Russian station is on track for Thursday.

The space shuttle Atlantis cracked open a robin’s-egg-blue Florida sky with a deafening roar Tuesday afternoon as hundreds of spectators and NASA officials cheered and sighed with collective relief.

Pounding rain with lightning had been soaking the area for days, preventing two scheduled launches last week and threatening to keep the five U.S. and two Russian crew members indefinitely on the ground. But the storms held off Tuesday.

Atlantis had to begin its journey during a 10-minute window beginning at 3:32 p.m. EDT in order to make its planned docking with the Russian Mir space station, now set for Thursday morning. Mir passed over Kennedy Space Center just minutes before Atlantis took off. By the time the shuttle left the ground, Mir was over Iraq.

“Liftoff of the space shuttle Atlantis on a mission that will herald a new day of international cooperation in space,” launch commentator Bruce Buckingham announced as the shuttle, looking like a toy plane attached to a mile-high flamethrower, rode into orbit. The blastoff marked America’s 100th manned trip into space.

The mission is the first joint U.S.-Russian mission since a U.S. Apollo spacecraft linked up briefly with a Russian Soyuz in 1975. This time, the two craft are to mate for five days at more than 200 miles above the Earth while the crew conducts several dozen experiments on biological effects of zero gravity to set the stage for building an international space station.

Waiting on Mir for a ride home is astronaut Norman E. Thagard, who broke the record for the longest U.S. spaceflight on June 6, when he logged 85 days on Mir. His two crew mates, cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Gennady Strekalov, will also be hitching a ride home on Atlantis.

Meanwhile, cosmonauts Anatoly Y. Solovyev, and Nikolai M. Budarin, who will ride up on Atlantis, will remain in space as the next Mir crew.

Atlantis is commanded by Navy Capt. Robert L. (Hoot) Gibson. In the pilot’s seat is Air Force Lt. Col. Charles J. Precourt. The mission specialists are Dr. Ellen S. Baker, Gregory J. Harbaugh and Bonnie J. Dunbar.

Launch was delayed so long that dozens of Russian dignitaries gathered for the event had to leave for Moscow to get home in time for a meeting on space matters with Vice President Al Gore.

One of those dignitaries, cosmonaut Elena Kondakova, was waiting on Mir when Thagard arrived in March; in February, she had waved out Mir’s window at the crew of the shuttle Discovery during its rendezvous. In a preliminary to the Atlantis docking, Discovery circled around Mir and hovered as close as 37 feet for just 10 minutes before backing off.

“It was a great pity they did not dock with us,” said Kondakova just hours before heading home. “I will be jealous of those who will be on the station and receiving the crew.”

Both U.S. and Russian crew members are eager to see their colleagues again.

“We’re really excited about opening that hatch and seeing [Thagard’s] smiling face,” said Harbaugh. “I’m not sure if he’s going to say hello in English or Russian.”

This is to be the first of seven planned dockings, all to test procedures and equipment for the international space station, a partnership among Russia, the United States, Europe, Japan and Canada. Construction is due to begin in 1997, with occupancy scheduled for 2002.

Soon after launch, Atlantis began a series of rocket firings designed to put it in roughly the same orbit as Mir. Today crew members will continue to line up their orbit and will activate Spacelab, where experiments are stowed. They will also check out equipment and cameras for the docking.

On Thursday, they will drift up toward Mir. The docking itself, Gibson said, will be a “long, slow, laborious process.”

First, they will attempt a “soft” landing that will latch the two vehicles together yet allow them to wobble around a bit to damp the motion between them.

Once Mir and Atlantis have settled into perfect alignment, 12 latches on Atlantis will reach out and grab 12 hooks on Mir. Then a series of checks will be conducted for pressure leaks.

Finally, the hatches will open and the handshaking and bear hugs will begin.

For the next five days, Russian and U.S. crew members will be submitted to a grueling routine of experiments to monitor how zero gravity affects bones, blood, urine, breath, sensory perception and even bacteria.

On the seventh day, the crews will hold a joint news conference and then a farewell ceremony. Appropriately, on this seventh day, they will also rest.

Atlantis is due to stay in orbit two or three more days to conduct further experiments, then land at Kennedy Space Center on July 7--weather permitting, of course.