Top

International Space Station

July 19, 2011 by · Comments Off on International Space Station 

International Space StationInternational Space Station, This morning, the space shuttle Atlantis separated from the International Space Station for the last time from his two-day journey back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After eight days, 15 hours, 21 minutes, the shuttle undocked from the ISS at 2:28 am, ET, whereas it was 243 miles above the Pacific, east of Christchurch, New Zealand. At 4:18 a.m., Atlantis fired its jets and formally separated from the space station.

Before starting his journey home, mission specialists Rex Walheim and sand Magnus took pictures of the ISS from 600 feet above the station, catch the corners of the ship has never seen before on a flight around said NASA.

The crew began a system of inspection of the shuttle thermal protection shortly after 6 am. Crewmembers used the 50-foot long Orbiter Boom Sensor System to conduct a 3D scan of the areas of the wing leading edges and nose cap, which experience the highest heating during the income. Officials in Mission Control will review the data for heat shield in the coming days to make sure everything is running.

In all, NASA has completed 37 missions devoted to assembly and maintenance of the space station for a total of 276 days, 11 hours and 23 minutes, or weeks, almost 40.

Yesterday, the Atlantis crew successfully loads the luggage bay of the vehicle, the deposit of the 21-foot storage bin Raffaello back to Atlantis. It was filled to the ISS 9403 pounds of spare parts, equipment and supplies, including other 2677 pounds of food to sustain the full crew of the ISS next year. Comes with 5,700 kilos of supplies, including defective parts, and a good amount of trash that had accumulated on the ISS.

Atlantis is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center at 5:56 am EDT Thursday. The night before, construction of New York Empire State Building will be lit in red; white and blue in honor of the NASA program the space shuttle.

Bottom