NASA STS-117 Status
Report #26
(21 June 2007) The astronauts on space
shuttle Atlantis are just hours away from an anticipated landing in Florida to
conclude a nearly 13-day mission to deliver new electrical generation capacity
for expansion of the International Space Station.
This morning's
wakeup song, "Makin' Good Time Coming Home" by john Arthur Martinez, was played
for Commander Rick Sturckow and Mission Specialist Jim Reilly.
Deorbit
preparations get started at 7:50 a.m., and the crew should get the OK to close
the payload bay doors at 9:05 a.m. If systems are good and the weather
co-operates, Sturckow will conduct the deorbit burn at 11:50 a.m. to slow
Atlantis enough to fall out of orbit and begin its descent toward a landing at
the Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility at 12:55 p.m.
A
landing on that opportunity would conclude Mission Specialist Suni Williams'
record-setting flight at 193 days, 16 hours and 8 minutes, the longest single
spaceflight ever by a female astronaut or cosmonaut.
There is another
landing opportunity on the following orbit, which would put Atlantis on the
ground at 2:30 p.m. There are two opportunities at both KSC and Edwards Air
Force Base in California tomorrow in case weather prevents a landing
today.
Aboard the International Space Station Expedition 15 Commander
Fyodor Yurchikhin plans to carry out a troubleshooting procedure on the Russian
segment's central computer and terminal computer today. This procedure will not
impact operation of the two channels of each computer that have been in control
of Russian system operation since the restart on Friday.
At 8:05 a.m.
Yurchikhin will activate the backup channels of both computers; on the next
Russian ground site pass he'll shut them down and remove the jumpers that
bypassed a secondary power switch. On the ground site pass at 11:25 a.m. he'll
restart those channels to see if they run properly without the jumpers in
place. In addition, Mission Control Moscow plans to restart the Elektron oxygen
generation system at 11:40 a.m., putting it into operation for the first time
since the computer failures last week.
Today's troubleshooting procedure
is designed to help Russian mission managers further assess their plans for
repair of the computer systems, including possible replacement of components
with new hardware to be flown on the next Progress supply ship due to arrive at
ISS July 24.
The next STS-117 status report will be issued Thursday
afternoon, or earlier if events warrant.
(source: NASA Johnson Space
Center)