CAPE CANAVERAL: Shuttle Atlantis is racing after the Hubble Space Telescope a day after taking off on a daring repair mission.On Tuesday, the seven astronauts will spend the entire day inspecting virtually every inch of the shuttle for any launch damage. They surveyed the thermal shielding on their crew cabin Monday evening. This final trip to Hubble is especially dangerous because of all the space junk in the telescope's 350-mile-high (560-kilometer-high) orbit. Atlantis seems to have come through its launch fairly well, at least. But the analysis is continuing. Another shuttle, Endeavour, is at the launch pad and could takeoff in three to six days if the astronauts had to be rescued. Atlantis will catch up to Hubble on Wednesday.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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