Atlantis Returns Home Safe
Safe Return of Atlantis
Wednesday was a red-letter day for NASA and their seven astronauts, as Atlantis and its astronaut crew safely returned back to Earth after a “near perfect 13-day construction space station mission.” The successful construction of the European lab served as a “role model for international cooperation,” with the station about 57% done, weighing 567,856 pounds.
Looking back at Rex Walheim’s first 2002 mission when he helped install a truss segment, he was impressed by how much the International Space Station has grown since then. “It’s great to see how big the station is now. It really gets your attention, ” a remark was made by Walheim when the International Space Station appeared in the shuttle windshield before it docked.
Atlantis reached Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, clearing our government for military plans to shoot down their spy satellite before it crashed into Earth. Before it returned to Florida, Alan Poindexter went ahead and fired-up two small engines for two minutes and 44 seconds, which was to slow the shuttle down to about 250 kilometers per hour. Its speed up to this moment was 27,000 kph, which is approximately 25 times the speed of sound.
The descent to Florida took about one hour, ranging over the Gulf of Mexico and past western Cuba before landing in Florida, no storm in sight and under clear blue skies. “Atlantis rolling out on runway 15 wrapping up a 5.3 million mile mission to expand the global village of space,” said NASA television commentator Rob Navias. On Tuesday, NASA flight director Brian Lunney said that he felt there was no pressure to quickly land the shuttle, spy satellite or not, “I’m not going to land the vehicle until it’s safe to do so.”
But the US military waited to destroy the satellite, waiting until the space shuttle landed safely, in order to do a shoot-down which is thought to cost our government about 40 to 60 million dollars.
The guided missile destroyer, the USS Decatur, carried a third interceptor missile just in case the first one missed, which it did not. It was thought bad weather possibly would have delayed the shoot-down , but “There is a very low risk because our orbits are quite different,” said Atlantis Commander Frick.
By the way, the Carnival of Space 42nd edition is out, sponsored by Chris Lintott at his “Chris Lintott’s Universe.” Considered the best collections of astronomy and space writing on the web, it is well worth the effort to check it out.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 2:23 am and is filed under Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
