Despite changing weather patterns and an increase in the UFO activity around the ISS the NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis landed safely with all six of its astronauts in tow.
Atlantis touched down at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center before dawn at about 06:21 a.m. EDT with a 12-day mission that focued mainly on re-starting ISS construction efforts delayed by previous shuttle problems.
“It’s nice to be back and [it] was a great team effort,” Atlantis’ STS-115 Commander Brent Jett said after the early morning landing. “I think [the ISS] assembly is off to a good start.”
The “good start” Commander Jett referred to was the first new additions to the ISS since late 2002 that included a new set of winged solar arrays and the installation of two huge trusses.
“We are back in the assembly business,” Wayne Hale, NASA’s space shuttle program manager said of Atlantis’ STS-115 flight. “This is one of the most complex missions that has even been flown in space.”
The landing had been delayed for one day to allow for a more intense inspecton of the shuttle’s heat shield. Also of concern were several mysterious bits of debris and small shiny disc-shaped objects located in orbit around the shuttles projected orbital path. These “UFO’s” began showing up this week as a single black tumbling object and increased on Wednesday to several objects of silvery, circular design. NASA officials stated that they are still investigating what they were since it became obvious, after inspection of the ISS and shuttle, that they did not originate from there.
The safe and uneventful landing concluded NASA’s 116th shuttle flight — and the 27th mission for the Atlantis shuttle after 11 days, 19 hours and six minutes. It also marked NASA’s 15th night landing at the Kennedy Space Center and the 21st unlit return of an orbiter.
Orbital construction of the ISS will resume with future launches to include updating and expanding the electrical grid, module additions and the addition of new laboratory facilities, crew quarters and enhanced communications.
“If we made it look easy, then I guess that’s a good thing,” said astronaut Stefanyshyn-Piper. “It was difficult and there were a lot of complex tasks [to complete].” “We achieved a new record in assembly of a major component in a minimum number of spacewalks,” Hale added.
Atlantis’ just completed mission included 3-spacewalks in 4-days that allowed the shuttle crew to install the Port 3 and Port 4 truss segments to the space station’s port side and unfurl the solar arrays to their 73-meter wingspan.
“For the first time in four years, the shape of the space station changed and it was really dramatic,” said Paul Dye, NASA’s lead shuttle flight director for the mission. “We can see that we’ve really done something big for the space station.”
The next trip to the ISS will be the Shuttle Discovery’s STS-116 mission scheduled for December 2006. Veteran astronaut Mark Polansky will lead the mission that will take new ISS crewmember replacement Sunita Williams to her duty station, deliver a new portside section for installation and begin the electrical rewiring necessary for a series of missions to ready the station’s infrastructure for future assembly.
The solar arrays unfurled during Atlantis’ STS-115 mission, representing about one-fourth of the station’s final power grid, will begin feeding the outpost with more of its power requirements during Discovery’s mission.
