NASA mission managers are expected to decide this week whether the shuttle Atlantis can launch a day earlier than its current March 16 target to continue assembly of the International Space Station, a space agency spokesperson said. 

“We do expect, by the end of the week, that the shuttle program will get the input it requires to move the launch date up a day to March 15,” Rob Navias, a NASA spokesperson at the agency’s Houston-based Johnson Space Center, told me Monday in a phone call. Navias says there are no showstoppers currently standing in the way of an earlier launch date, and that the decision could come earlier than a Jan. 25 meeting.

Atlantis’ STS-117 astronaut crew, commanded by veteran shuttle flyer Rick Sturckow, is due to launch towards the International Space Station in March for an 11-day mission to deliver, then install, a new pair of solar arrays to the starboard side of the orbital laboratory.