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Atlantis Blasts Off With Science Lab Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off Wednesday with the most expensive and pivotal piece of the international space station: a $1.4 billion science laboratory. Atlantis and its crew of five soared into a clear sky at 6:00 p.m., with a rising full moon in the background and the setting sun turning the exhaust trail a beautiful gold and peach. The plume cast a rainbow-like shadow that seemed to stretch all the …

…will be the scene of round-the-clock, seven-day-a-week, month-after-month orbital research, something NASA hasn't done since Skylab in the 1970s. The experiments will involve fluids, metals, semiconductors, flames, plants and, perhaps most important, the human body. NASA wants to learn more about the effects of radiation and weightlessness on the body before it sends astronauts to Mars. Destiny will probably not be operating fully until 2006, given all the other space station construction still to be done.