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Change Your Life! |
Astronauts clean up shuttle for weekend ride home |
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May 29, 2000 CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, MAY 28 (AP) - Flying solo once more, space shuttle Atlantis' stronauts cleaned up Saturday from all their repair work at the international space station, and packed for the ride home.
They're scheduled to return to the Kennedy Space Center early Monday, although the forecast isn't too promising.
The threat of rain and low clouds on landing morning did not damper NASA's excitement over a job well done.
Atlantis' U.S.-Russian crew replaced four bad batteries and a broken antenna on the space station, put in new fire extinguishers, smoke detectors and fans, and installed one construction crane and fixed another. They also gave the station a lift to a higher orbit.
"All of our mission objectives have been accomplished," said space station manager Jim Van Laak, "and we've left the space station in a fantastic mechanical condition ready to proceed to the docking with the service module in July."
Russia's two-year delay in launching the service module has held up construction work in orbit. No major parts can be added to the space station and no one can move in until the service module - part propulsion tug, part crew quarters - is in place.
Once the service module is launched from Kazakstan, Atlantis will return to the space station with a new crew and more supplies, hopefully in September. The first full-time occupants will follow a few months later.
After a hectic week culminating with Friday's evening undocking from the space station, Atlantis' seven crew members finally got a break. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev was especially grateful. As a veteran of space station Mir and six-month missions, he wasn't used to cramming so much into so little time.
"It was a little bit unusual for me, you know with the shuttle short mission," Usachev said. "Very tense, much more to do just in comparison with long flights on the station."
Usachev will return to the international space station next year as its second commander. He'll spend five months there with U.S.
astronauts Susan Helms and James Voss, who are also on this shuttle flight. "When we come back," Helms said, "it will be everything just as we expected."
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