Shuttle safely arrives home
Ness CANAVERAL, Sunshine State Space shuttle Atlantis and its crew renderred to Earth on Wednesday, wrapper up a 5 million-mile journey spotlighted by the successful delivery of a new European science lab to the international space station.
The birdie and its seven cosmonauts landed at 9:07 a.m. at NASA’s spaceport at Kennedy Space Center, where the crew’s houses and top space program directors gathered to receive them home.
Commanding officer Stephen Frick safely guided Atlantis down through a sky dotted with thin, wisplike clouds and onto
“It’s existed a great missionary post. We’re highly happy to be home,” Frick told Mission Control. Watch Atlantis glide to smoothen landing “
National Aeronautics and Space Administration wanted Atlantis back as shortly as possible to unclutter the manner for the Navy to hit down a conking spy satellite on the brink of booming into Earth with a burden of toxic fuel. The projectile could be established as early as Wednesday nighttime from a war vessel in the Pacific.
Atlantis circled Earth 202 multiplication during its foreign mission, which set out February 7. Nine of those 13 years were exhausted at the international space station, where the two crews put in the European scientific discipline lab, Capital of Ohio, that was ferrieded up by the birdie.
A French cosmonaut, Leopold Eyharts, stayed at the revolving outpost with an American and a Russian to acquire Columbus up and scatting. He supplanted NASA cosmonaut Daniel Tani, who renderred home on board Atlantis after 120 years in space.
Tani’s foreign mission was scarred by the expiry of his 90-year-old mother in a dealings accident in December, halfway through his space station stay. Even though the cosmonaut was capable to hear in to her funeral, he expressed it was hard being so far away at such a tragical time. He couldn’t wait to be reunified with his married woman, two young girls and early family fellow members.
Also on hand to recognise Tani was the rector who presidedded over his mother’s funeral, the Rev. Fleece Hatfield of First Church of Lombard in Illinois.
After two calendar months of wait because of fuel gauge trouble, Atlantis ended up with an remarkably trouble-free flight. Warmers for a set of small pushers failed earliest this hebdomad, but posed no concern for re-entry. And a radiator hose that was flexed before the flying retracted neatly into its box when the load bay doorways were unopen in the wee hour for landing place.
After visitting his ship on the rails, Frick illustrious that Atlantis did work “beautifully and dead.”
“We acquired everything through that we had got hoped to acquire done,” he emphasised.
NASA’s next missionary post is justed three hebdomads away. Endeavour is scheduledded to blare off with the first piece of Japan’s monolithic space station laboratory on March 11. The second piece of the Japanese Kibo research lab — Kibo way hope — was called to go up in April on board Discovery, but has existed delayed until May because of shuttlecock fuel tank work.
Atlantis, meanwhile, won’t fly over again until the terminal of August, when it takes a squad of maintenance men to the Hubble Space Telescope for one final tuneup.
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