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Shuttle Atlantis bidding farewell to the space station BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: July 19, 2011 
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL--After 37 space station assembly flights over the past 12-and-a-half years, the crew of the shuttle Atlantis prepared to undock from the lab complex for the final time Tuesday in a long-awaited milestone that marks the beginning of the end for NASA's last shuttle mission. With pilot Douglas "Chunky" Hurley at the control, Atlantis is scheduled to pull away from the station's forward docking port at 2:28 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) as the two spacecraft pass 243 miles above the Pacific Ocean east of Christchurch, New Zealand. After moving to a point about 600 feet directly in front of the orbital laboratory, Hurley plans to pause for about a half hour while the station carries out a 90-degree yaw maneuver, lining up with the long axis of its solar power truss aimed at the shuttle. The station normally is oriented with the truss oriented at right angles to the lab's direction of travel and departing shuttle's typically loop around the axis formed by the station's pressurized modules before departing. But for this final departure, flight controllers are giving the shuttle a different view to provide better photo documentation of the station's extremities. "It will be a typical undock day, with a slight twist," Hurley said in a NASA interview. "Our flyaround is going to involve the station yawing to 90 degrees to one side, so when we do the flyaround, rather than over the center portion of the space station, we're going to go over kind of the long axis of the space station and get some views that we haven't seen of the space station in a very long time, if ever. "This will also help folks on the ground be able to document any specific areas of interest or micrometeorite damage that the station has had, as we move forward into the post-shuttle era. So that in and of itself should be a fairly unique flyaround." The half-lap fly over should begin around 3:30 a.m. and end about 25 minutes later with the first of two rocket firings to leave the area. Assuming an on-time undocking, space shuttles will have spent 276 days 11 hours and 23 minutes docked to the station since construction began in 1998, or more than nine months all together. With the station departure behind them, Hurley, commander Christopher Ferguson, Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim plan to carry out a final heat shield inspection later today. They will test the shuttle re-entry systems Wednesday, pack up and set their sights on re-entry Thursday and landing back at the Kennedy Space Center around 5:56 a.m. Good weather is expected. The Atlantis astronauts left a flag behind on the space station that was first carried into orbit aboard the shuttle Columbia during the first shuttle mission in 1981. The flag will remain in place until U.S. astronauts, launched on new commercial spacecraft, retrieve it later this decade, a gap of uncertain duration. Astronaut Dan Tani tried to put that in perspective during a morning chat with space station flight engineer Ronald Garan. "Today is the 36th anniversary of the undocking of the Apollo from the Soyuz at the end of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program mission," Tani said from mission control in Houston. "The Apollo landing, which was two days later just like shuttle's, marked the beginning of the gap during which time the U.S. did not have any manned launches. That gap was closed five years and nine months later with the launch of (Columbia on) STS-1. So that's our mark to beat -- five years and nine months. We'll start the clock." "All right, we just (started) our clock," Garan replied. "Thanks." Departing shuttles normally fly a full loop around the station after undocking, but today's departure was limited to a half-lap flyaround. Atlantis was launched with a reduced crew of four and given the time required to carry out undocking and a final heat shield inspection, flight controllers limited the flyaround to a half loop over the top of the lab complex. The inspection of the shuttle's reinforced carbon carbon nose cap and wing leading edge panels is a standard feature of post-Columbia shuttle missions. The goal is to look for any signs of impact damage from space debris or micrometeoroids that might have occurred since a similar inspection the day after launch. As always, the shuttle's Canadian-built robot arm will use an instrumented boom to scan the nose cap and wing leading edge panels, which experience the most extreme heating during re-entry. In yet another bittersweet milestone for NASA, the inspection will mark the final use of the 50-foot-long robot arm, a technological marvel that gave the shuttle its unique ability to precisely position spacewalking astronauts, to deploy and retrieve satellites like the Hubble Space Telescope and to assemble the International Space Station. Over the past three decades, experiencing virtually no technical problems, the robot arm has deployed or retrieved seven satellites, assisted in 115 spacewalks, delivered 30 space station components and grappled 72 payloads. Today's inspection will bring down the curtain on Canada's hugely successful contribution to the shuttle program. The astronauts are scheduled to go to bed at 1:59 p.m. Wakeup is expected at 9:59 p.m. Here is an updated timeline of the crew's planned activities for flight day 12 (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision L of the NASA television schedule; best viewed with fixed-width font): DATE/EDT...DD...HH...MM...SS...EVENT 07/18 09:59 PM...10...10...30...00...Crew wakeup 07/19 12:24 AM...10...12...55...00...ISS daily planning conference 12:30 AM...10...13...00...56...US solar arrays feathered 12:34 AM...10...13...05...00...Group B computer powerup 12:52 AM...10...13...23...54...Sunset 12:54 AM...10...13...24...56...Start maneuver to undocking attitude 01:20 AM...10...13...50...56...ISS in proximity operations mode 01:23 AM...10...13...53...56...Orbiter/ISS in undock attitude 01:27 AM...10...13...58...53...Sunrise 01:56 AM...10...14...27...34...Noon 02:23 AM...10...14...53...56...Russian solar arrays feathered 02:25 AM...10...14...56...15...Sunset 02:28 AM...10...14...59...00...UNDOCKING 02:28 AM...10...14...59...05...Maintain corridor 02:29 AM...10...15...00...00...Initial separation 02:29 AM...10...15...00...40...ISS holds attitude 02:33 AM...10...15...04...00...Range: 50 ft: reselect -X jets 02:35 AM...10...15...06...00...Range: 75 ft: Low-Z jets 02:46 AM...10...15...17...00...Range: 250 ft 02:50 AM...10...15...21...00...Range: 400 ft 03:00 AM...10...15...31...00...Range: 600 feet; begin stationkeeping 03:00 AM...10...15...31...00...ISS start maneuver to +YVV flyaround attitude 03:00 AM...10...15...31...12...Sunrise 03:27 AM...10...15...57...56...ISS in +YVV flyaround attitude 03:27 AM...10...15...58...00...Shuttle starts half-lap flyaround 03:28 AM...10...15...59...53...Noon 03:38 AM...10...16...09...31...Shuttle directly above ISS 03:50 AM...10...16...21...02...Shuttle directly behind ISS 03:50 AM...10...16...21...03...Separation burn No. 1 (1.5 fps +X radial burn) 03:50 AM...10...16...21...03...ISS start maneuver to normal attitude 03:57 AM...10...16...28...34...Sunset 04:17 AM...10...16...47...56...ISS in normal attitude 04:18 AM...10...16...49...03...Separation burn No. 2 (10.0 fps -X retrograde burn) 04:24 AM...10...16...55...00...Group B computer powerdown 04:32 AM...10...17...03...32...Sunrise 05:01 AM...10...17...32...14...Noon 05:19 AM...10...17...50...00...Crew meal 06:34 AM...10...19...05...00...OBSS starboard wing survey 07:30 AM...10...20...01...00...Mission status briefing on NASA TV 08:14 AM...10...20...45...00...OBSS nose cap survey 09:04 AM...10...21...35...00...OBSS port wing survey 10:49 AM...10...23...20...00...OBSS berthing 10:49 AM...10...23...20...00...Laser dynamic range imager downlink 11:44 AM...11...00...15...00...Shuttle robot arm powerdown 11:59 AM...11...00...30...00...Playback of undocking video 01:00 PM...11...01...31...00...Mission management team briefing on NASA TV 01:59 PM...11...02...30...00...STS crew sleep begins 02:00 PM...11...02...31...00...STS-135 ascent imagery highlights on NASA TV 03:00 PM...11...03...31...00...Flight day 12 highlights on NASA TV 05:40 PM...11...06...11...00...STS-135 ascent imagery highlights replay 06:15 PM...11...06...46...00..."Space Shuttle" video on NASA TV 09:59 PM...11...10...30...00...Crew wakeup 11:00 PM...11...11...31...00...STS-135 ascent imagery highlights replay
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VIDEO:
MODULE RETURNED TO SHUTTLE BAY 