HOUSTON --
Seven NASA astronauts will bid farewell to the International Space Station
(ISS) Tuesday when their shuttle Atlantis undocks after a busy construction
mission.
Atlantis
and its STS-117 crew are due to depart the space station at 10:42 a.m. EDT
(1442 GMT) after almost 10 days docked at the orbital laboratory.
"Ten days
is too short a time," ISS Expedition 15 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin said Monday
as the two crews shut
the hatches between their spacecraft after a heartfelt farewell.
Commanded
by veteran NASA shuttle flyer Rick Sturckow, Atlantis' STS-117 crew performed
four spacewalks to install a pair of massive, 17.5-ton trusses to the space
station's starboard side and unfurl
two new solar wings from their tip.
The astronauts
also helped furl the second of two older solar arrays into storage boxes atop
the station's mast-like Port 6 truss, clearing the nearly seven-year-old
segment for relocation on a later shuttle flight.
"This has
been a great mission from a lot of perspectives," Atlantis pilot Lee
Archambault told Mission Control Monday. "It's been a challenging mission, but
a successful one."
Some of
those unanticipated challenges included a major crash of Russian control and
navigation computer systems aboard the ISS last week, prompting several
days of troubleshooting to fix. The planned 11-day mission was also extended
by two days to allow an extra spacewalk and the repair of a torn thermal
blanket on Atlantis' left aft engine pod.
Atlantis is
leaving one crewmember, U.S. astronaut Clayton Anderson, aboard the ISS as part
of three-astronaut Expedition 15 crew. Anderson replaced fellow U.S. astronaut Sunita
Williams, who is returning to Earth aboard the shuttle after setting a record
for the longest
spaceflight by a female spaceflyer during her more than six months aboard
the orbital laboratory.
"I know you'll
miss her, she's a joy to work with," Sturckow said of Williams Monday. "But it's
time for her to go back to planet Earth."
Fly-around
on tap
Before
Atlantis begins its trip back towards Earth, it will conduct a victory lap of
sorts around the ISS.
At the
shuttle's helm will be Archambault, who will take control of the 100-ton
orbiter once it is about 400 feet (122 meters) away from the station and guide
it completely around the ISS while his crewmates snap photographs from the rear
windows of Atlantis' flight deck.
Phil
Engelauf, NASA's STS-117 mission operations representative, said the fly-around
will allow the astronauts to survey their handiwork from afar. The photographs,
he added, will be used by engineers to study the health and upgraded
configuration of the station's exterior with its new solar starboard solar
arrays.
Later
today, once Atlantis has pulled away from the ISS, the shuttle crew will use
the orbiter's robotic arm and 50-foot (15-meter) extension tipped with cameras
to scan the spacecraft's vital heat shield for damage by orbital debris or
micrometeorites.
Atlantis
and its STS-117 crew are due to return to Earth on June 21, with landing
targeted for 1:54 p.m. EDT (1754 GMT) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape
Canaveral, Florida.
NASA is
broadcasting the space shuttle Atlantis' STS-117 mission live on NASA TV. Click here for mission updates and
SPACE.com's
video feed.
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