From NASA and SOAR Magazine Staff Reports

Space Shuttle Atlantis glided to a landing this morning at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., concluding a successful mission to resume construction of the International Space Station. Touchdown occurred at 6:21 a.m., EDT at the Shuttle Landing Facility. It was the 21st night landing for a space shuttle and the 15th night landing at the Florida spaceport.

Atlantis crossed Mexico’s west coast near Puerto Vallerta and then the east coast south of Monterey before flying over the Gulf of Mexico and cross both coasts of the Florida panhandle. The orbiter’s final approach included a roughly 280-degree, right-hand turn and a touchdown on Runway 33 at KSC.

In all, Atlantis and the six-memeber crew spent 186 orbits and 11 days, 19 hours, 6 minutes, and 33 seconds in flight.

Atlantis launched September 9 and arrived at the station on the 11th. The crew delivered the P3/P4 integrated truss segment to the station and conducted three successful spacewalks primarily devoted to preparing the truss and its solar arrays for operation. The 17.5-ton truss will provide power and data services for the station. The solar arrays, which were unfurled on September 14, span 240 feet and will double the station’s power generation capability once they become operational.

STS-115 was the 116th shuttle flight and the 19th mission to visit the space station. Atlantis has now flown 27 times and made six trips to the station.

The orbiter landing convoy completed the process of “safing” the vehicle, and the six crew members took their first steps back on Earth as they exited Atlantis through the Crew Hatch Access Vehicle. After receiving a quick check by doctors, Commander Brent Jett was followed onto the runway by the entire crew. The astronauts performed a walk-around inspection of the vehicle to see how their ship fared through the 11-day mission.

Following the quick inspection of Atlantis, Jett offered nothing but praise for the dependable ship. “It was critical that she perform well and she did,” said Jett. “It was a pleasure to fly her and it’s great to be home.”

The STS-115 astronauts then boarded the “Astrovan” waiting to take them to the crew quarters inside the Operations and Checkout Building, where they will be reunited with their families and undergo additional physical examinations.

“The teams did a wonderful job,” NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said during a post-landing briefing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “You’ve seen a great effort on NASA’s part by a truly great team of people. We are rebuilding the type of momentum that we’ve had in the past and we’ll need to continue.”

In addition to Jett, the STS-115 crew consisted of Pilot Christopher J. Ferguson and Mission Specialists Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper, Joseph R. Tanner, Daniel C. Burbank and Steven G. MacLean, who represents the Canadian Space Agency.

Bad weather in Florida forcast for yesterday and an unplanned inspection of the orbiter when debris was spoted sharing Atlantis’ orbit resulted in an extra day in orbit for the STS-115 crew.
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By Marc S. Posner
SOAR Magazine

Atlantis is set to conclude NASA’s return-to-construction mission with an early morning landing at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday.

Earlier today, the agency cleared the shuttle for re-entry following additional inspections prompted by the discovery of debris floating in orbit with Atlantis. Reviews have convinced mission managers that no damage has been done to the orbiter’s thermal protection system, which prevents the craft from buring up as it passes through the Earth’s atmosphere.

Bad weather in Florida projected for today also helped shape the agency’s decision to delay landing by a day.

If the weather holds — and the current predictions show favorable, if not ideal conditions — Atlantis will glide to a landing on Kennedy Space Center’s Runway 33 at 6:50 a.m., EDT. De-orbit burn for the primary landing opportunity would take place at 5:14 a.m., EDT.

A second landing opportunity is available, beginning with a de-orbit burn at 6:50 a.m. leading to a landing at 7:57 a.m. in Florida.

NASA has no plans to activate the back-up landing facility at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Instead, if a landing is not possible at KSC tomorrow, the agency would again extend Atlantis’ stay in orbit.

Atlantis’ return path will have it cross Mexico’s west coast near Puerto Vallerta and then the east coast south of Monterey. The shuttle will then glide over the Gulf of Mexico and cross both coasts of the Florida panhandle before making a roughly 280-degree, right-hand turn and touching down at the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center.

Touchdown on the first attempt would end the mission after 186 orbits for an elapsed time of 11 days, 19 hours, 6 minutes, and 33 seconds. The second attempt would add another orbit and roughly an hour and 36 minutes to the mission.

From NASA

Due to inclement weather expected Wednesday along Florida’s east coast and the need for performing further analysis on an unidentified object that was spotted orbiting below the Space Shuttle Atlantis this morning, NASA’s Mission Management Team has waved off Wednesday’s planned landing of the Space Shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for 24 hours. Landing is now set for early Thursday morning at Kennedy.

The crew has re-opened the payload bay doors and deployed Atlantis’ robot arm to inspect the shuttle for possible damage, with cameras mounted on the arm able to examine virtually every area of the shuttle and its heat shield. Engineers and flight controllers are developing a plan for inspections that may be performed on Wednesday to ensure that Atlantis is safe for re-entry. Controllers are concerned the co-orbiting object may be something that came off of Atlantis during tests of its reaction control system thrusters and hydraulics earlier today.

The weather forecast in Florida calls for better weather at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday. However, if a landing is not possible on Thursday in Florida due to weather or other constraints, mission managers still have the option of delaying the landing up to two additional days, or diverting Atlantis to the backup landing site at NASA Dryden at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.

From NASA

The International Space Station’s next crew began the journey to its home new early Monday. The Soyuz rocket carrying Expedition 14 into space lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:09 a.m. EDT.

Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin are scheduled to arrive at the station at 1:24 a.m. Wednesday. Flying to the station with them will be American Anousheh Ansari, the first female spaceflight participant to visit the orbiting laboratory. She is flying under contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency.

Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin will replace Expedition 13 Commander Pavel Vinogradov and NASA Science Officer Jeff Williams, who are wrapping up a six-month stay on the station. European Space Agency Astronaut Thomas Reiter will remain on the station and join Expedition 14.

Early Sunday, Expedition 13 concluded a busy week of joint operations with STS-115. The six-member STS-115 crew arrived at the station Sept. 11 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis. The STS-115 and Expedition 13 crews used the shuttle and station robotic arms to install the P3/P4 truss and its solar arrays on to the station. The shuttle crew then conducted three spacewalks to prepare the addition for operation.

Atlantis undocked at 8:50 a.m. Sunday. STS-115 is the first construction mission to visit the station since late 2002. STS-116 is the next construction mission and it is scheduled to visit the station and Expedition 14 as early as December.

The Expedition 13 crew is also preparing for the departure of the Progress 21 cargo ship, which is filled with trash and other unneeded items. The Progress will undock at 8:28 p.m. Monday. It will then be commanded to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere to burn up harmlessly.

From NASA

The STS-115 astronauts enjoyed some off duty time and transferred cargo Saturday, their last full day at the International Space Station. Space Shuttle Atlantis and the STS-115 crew are slated to undock at 8:50 a.m. EDT Sunday.

The crew members received free time Saturday morning. This came on the heels of a four-day stretch in which they performed three spacewalks in a four-day period. The spacewalks featured tasks to prepare the station’s newly installed P3/P4 integrated truss for operation. The crew attached the truss to the station Sept. 12 prior to the start of the first spacewalk.

The transfer activities included loading Atlantis with station items that are returning to Earth, including science experiment results.

The STS-115 and Expedition 13 crews also held the traditional joint crew news conference earlier today. STS-115 Commander Brent Jett said this mission is a good start to the series of upcoming construction flights. “All of the rest of the assembly missions are going to be challenging.” Jett said. “We have similar payloads flying in the future. We are off to a good start on assembly. I think we can pass along a lot of the lessons to the future crews.”

Atlantis is scheduled to land at 5:57 a.m. on Wednesday at the Space Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, Fla.

Atlantis has docked with the International Space Station and the six-member crew is now aboard the orbiting outpost following their arrival early this morning.

With a tight mission timeline, Joe Tanner and Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper will head into the station’s Quest Airlock at about 2:40 p.m., where they will stay until they start the first of three spacewalks tomorrow morning.

The practice, known as “camping out,” helps the spacewalkers to begin the spacewalk earlier by reducing the amount of time typically required for the pre-breathe exercise and some spacewalk preparations.

Before docking, Commander Brent Jett and Pilot Chris Ferguson commanded Atlantis to do a back flip maneuver, which allowed the Expedition 13 crew to photograph Atlantis’ heat shield. Those pictures will be downlinked to engineers on the ground for analysis.

From NASA

The STS-115 astronauts entered their sleep period at 5:15 p.m. EDT Saturday for a well-deserved rest after the successful launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis. They will begin their first full day in space at 1:15 a.m. Sunday with a wake-up call from the Mission Control Center in Houston. Sunday’s activities will focus on shuttle heat shield inspections and preparations for STS-115’s arrival at the International Space Station.
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By Marc S. Posner
SOAR Magazine

Atlantis and its six-member crew this morning embarked on an ambitious mission to re-start construction of the International Space Station — work that was both delayed by and made more urgent because of the loss of Columbia.

Mission STS-115 is the first operational flight of a shuttle since Columbia burned up in the atmosphere during re-entry on February 1, 2003. Two flights of Discovery, one in July and the other nearly a year earlier, were primarily intended to test physical and procedural improvements to the 25-year-old shuttle program.

While in orbit, Atlantis’ astronauts will conduct perhaps the most rigorous series of tasks performed on a shuttle mission. For starters, they will partake in all the safety inspections done aboard the other post-Columbia missions — including heat-tile checks with the orbiter’s robotic arm and a flip of the shuttle for extensive photographing by the ISS crew.

With that done, three space walks will be used to add a section of trusses to the ISS and new solar arrays with corresponding batteries. In all, 17.5 tons of mass will be added by Atlantis astronauts to the space station. The two large solar arrays will provide one-fourth of the total power generation capability of the completed station.

It is the first new construction scheduled for the International Space Station by a shuttle crew in 4 years.

Not only has the work been long delayed because of the destruction of Columbia and its seven-member crew, but the need to finish the ISS is made more pressing because of President Bush’s desire to end the shuttle program. Under the President’s plan, NASA will utilize all remaining shuttle flights to complete the International Space Station and retire the shuttle fleet by 2010. It would also have the new crew exploration vehicle begin service by 2014 and return astronauts to the moon by 2020, all in an effort to eventually launch a human mission to Mars.

Many of the parts still to be installed on the ISS were designed specifically to be brought into orbit by a space shuttle, which now number just three. In addition to Atlantis, the shuttle fleet includes Discovery and Endeavour, which was built as a replacement for Challenger — the orbiter which exploded during a January, 1986 launch attempt, killing seven astronauts.

The crew is scheduled to work nearly non stop for the first seven days of the 11-day mission, the 19th by a shuttle to the ISS and the 12th dedicated by a shuttle crew to construction of the orbiting lab.

That schedule is by design.

Not planned were that preparations for NASA’s 116th shuttle mission were less than picture perfect. Among the problems, the space agency faced a lightning strike at the launch complex on the Friday prior to the original launch date. That in turn produced a delay that prompted NASA to pull Atlantis off the pad as Tropical Storm Ernesto approached.

Mission managers caught a break, though. More than 4 1/2 hours into the trip, Atlantis was ordered back to the pad to ride out the storm as forecasts changed to indicate Ernesto wouldn’t be felt as strong at Cape Canaveral as originally thought. It was just the 17th time in the 115-flight history of the 25-year-old shuttle program that the space transportation system was rolled back off the launch pad — and the first in which the shuttle didn’t actually return to the Vehicle Assembly Building. Both Atlantis and Kennedy Space Center remained free of damage as the storm passed last week.

Still, the countdown had to be restarted and NASA has had to bargain with the Russian Space Agency to extend STS-115’s launch window, which was artificially shortened because Atlantis’ mission will be followed by a Soyuz trip to the International Space Station. NASA got one additional day. The Russian craft will deliver the next ISS crew and also has a tight mission window because the Russians want to avoid a night landing at that mission’s end.

NASA needed every minute of the window extension, when the launch had to be postponed for two days because of a faulty pump motor in one of Atlantis’ three fuel cell that provide electricity to the shuttle while in orbit.

They needed more than that, when a sensor that detects fuel levels in the external tank failed and subsequently prompted a scrub of a launch attempt yesterday.

The STS-115 crew consists of Commander Brent W. Jett, Jr., Pilot Christopher J. Ferguson and Mission Specialists Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper, Joseph R. Tanner, Daniel C. Burbank and Steven G. MacLean, who represents the Canadian Space Agency.

The mission is the second this summer, but just the third overall since Columbia disintegrated on February 1, 2003 while attempting re-entry. All seven crew members were killed and NASA suspended the shuttle program to re-design the shuttle system’s external tank, which was blamed for losing a chunk of foam that struck and punctured Columbia’s left wing. The hole caused Columbia to burn up in the atmosphere.

Discovery has flown both post-Columbia missions, each spaced nearly a year apart — with the most recent beginning on July 4 and ending on July 17. Unlike those last two trips, however, STS-115’s mission is not classified as a test flight. Discovery’s primary purpose was to prove the shuttles’ worthiness following repairs to the orbiter system.

Atlantis has cleared the tower.

“It looks like your long wait is over,” Launch Director Mike Leinbach has just told the astronauts aboard Atlantis as mission managers have given the OK for launch.

“We’re ready to get back to work,” Commander Brent Jett responded.