NASA STS-117 Status
Report #30
(22 June 2007) Space shuttle Atlantis
returned home safely to the Mojave Desert following a 14-day, 5.8-million-mile
mission to the International Space Station.
It was the 51st
shuttle mission to end with a landing at the Edwards Air Force Base in
California.
Atlantis touched down on concrete runway 22 at 2:49:38 p.m.
concluding a 13 day, 20 hour, 12 minute flight. NASA's 747 Shuttle Carrier
Aircraft will deliver Atlantis back to Florida in about a week so that it can
be prepared for a December flight carrying the next laboratory module to the
station on behalf of the European Space Agency.
The crew spent the
morning in the world's largest holding pattern as flight controllers kept a
close eye on weather. Showers, thunderstorms and low clouds at Kennedy Space
Center knocked Florida out of the running on both the first and second landing
opportunities of the day, so flight controllers took their first chance at
Edwards, where weather was pristine.
Atlantis crew members, Commander
Rick Sturckow, Pilot Lee Archambault, and Mission Specialists Patrick
Forrester, Steven Swanson, Danny Olivas, Jim Reilly and Sunita Williams, who is
returning home after 194 days, 18 hours, 58 minutes in space, will return to
Houston on Saturday. A welcoming ceremony for the crew's return to Houston is
planned for 4:15 p.m. Saturday at NASA Hangar 276 at Ellington
Field.
During Atlantis' mission to the International Space Station, the
crew performed four spacewalks during which they worked with the station crew
to build the station into a near-symmetrical configuration, adding a new
starboard truss segment and solar array pair, while folding another array in
preparation for its relocation later this year.
Atlantis also delivered
Clay Anderson, the station's newest flight engineer, who will spend the next
six months living and working on the station.
The next shuttle mission,
targeted for early August, will see the return to flight of space shuttle
Endeavour to deliver another segment of the station's truss and 5,000 pounds of
food, clothing, supplies and spare parts. Endeavour's last mission was in
December 2002.
This is the final STS-117 mission status
report.
(source: NASA)