HOUSTON - The
vital heat shield on the space shuttle Atlantis received a clean bill of health
Wednesday as its astronaut crew prepares to return home after successfully
overhauling the Hubble Space Telescope.
Mission
managers said Atlantis in fine shape for its planned Friday, though rainy
weather could delay the spacecraft's return. Mission Control asked the shuttle's
seven-astronaut
crew to power down some non-essential systems in order to extend their stay
in orbit, if required.
"It's a
fairly benign power down and it's fairly non-intrusive," said LeRoy Cain, NASA's
deputy shuttle program manager, in a news briefing here at the Johnson Space
Center.
On
Wednesday, the astronauts took a well-deserved
day off and discussed their mission with reporters and the crew of the
International Space Station. They also took a personal phone call from U.S.
President Barack Obama.
Cain told
reporters that the power conservation measures require shutting down backup
computers and other non-vital systems, but shouldn't impact life aboard
Atlantis. It will extend the shuttle's supplies enough to allow it to stay
aloft through Monday, though NASA hopes to land Atlantis Friday at 10:01 a.m.
EDT (1401 GMT) at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Led by veteran
commander Scott Altman, the Atlantis astronauts are wrapping up an 11-day
mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to give the beloved 19-year-old
observatory one
last service call. The astronauts added two new instruments, performed
vital maintenance and fixed a pair of broken instruments that were never
designed to be repaired in space.
The exhausting
work, all packed within an intense five-spacewalk marathon, left Hubble more
powerful than ever before and should extend the long-lived observatory's
life for at least five or 10 years.
The
astronauts also primed the telescope for its eventual death. They added a
docking ring that will allow a robotic vehicle to latch onto Hubble sometime
after 2020 and send the space telescope plunging into the Pacific Ocean when
its mission ends.
To reach Hubble's
350-mile (563-km) orbit, Atlantis had to fly in a region known to have more
space junk than NASA's typical flight to the 220-mile (354-km) high
International Space Station. NASA had a backup shuttle – Endeavour – on standby
to fly a rescue mission just in case Atlantis suffered irreparable damage. But
the shuttle weathered the flight superbly, Cain said.
"The
mission has been a great success so far," Cain said. "It was everything we
anticipated and even more."
SPACE.com
is providing continuous coverage of NASA's last mission to the Hubble Space
Telescope with senior editor Tariq Malik in Houston and reporter Clara
Moskowitz in New York. Click
here for mission updates and SPACE.com's live NASA TV video feed.
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