Countdown begins for Atlantis liftoff

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Feb. 4 (UPI) -- The official countdown started Monday for this week's scheduled launch of the space shuttle Atlantis from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The space shuttle and its crew of seven astronauts are to lift off at 2:45 EST Thursday on their mission to the International Space Station, the space agency said in a news release.

Two scheduled launch attempts in December were postponed to allow for the replacement of a faulty connector in the external tank's engine cutoff low-level fuel sensor system. "Atlantis is ready to go fly," NASA Test Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said Monday.