'Sweet' swan song for Atlantis
2010-05-26 18:03
Cape Canaveral -The shuttle Atlantis returned to Earth on Wednesday from the final space flight of its 25-year career, marking the beginning of a bittersweet end for Nasa's storied space shuttle programme.
Shuttle commander Ken Ham touched the spacecraft down at 12:48, completing a flawless landing on the runway at Florida's Kennedy Space Centre.
On its approach back to Earth, Atlantis glided over the south Pacific, Panama and the western tip of Cuba before reaching Florida and the space centre and was "rock solid on the final approach," said Robert Cabana, director of the space centre.
Space officials had words of high praise for Ham's handling of the space vehicle.
"That looked pretty sweet," said Charlie Hobaugh, who as Nasa's "capsule communicator" and generally the only person who interacts directly with a crew during a spaceflight.
Wednesday's landing caps the 25-year career of one of Nasa's iconic spacecrafts.
The shuttle uncoupled from the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday after delivering 12 tons of supplies and equipment.
The six-member crew unloaded a crucial communications antenna, power storage batteries and a radiator during their rendezvous with the ISS.
Enter the Russians
The biggest single item was the 5-ton Rassvet research module, or MRM-1, which will provide additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.
The Rassvet - meaning "dawn" in Russian - was permanently attached to the bottom of the space station's Zarya module. It carries important hardware on its exterior including a radiator, airlock and a European robotic arm.
Atlantis astronauts completed their third and final spacewalk on Friday, plugging a new ammonia jumper cable into the station, transferring a grapple fixture from the shuttle to the station and reconfiguring some tools.
Atlantis logged approximately 8 000 000km on the mission, its 32nd and final one. Officials said that as of early on Wednesday Atlantis had logged a total of over 190 000 000km during its quarter-century-long career.
The final Atlantis flight is to be followed by only two more shuttle missions, one by Discovery in mid-September and the programme's final mission by Endeavour at the end of November.
Once the shuttle programme ends, the US will rely on Russian Soyuz rockets to carry its astronauts to the space station until a commercial US launcher can be developed. That is scheduled for 2015.
Rather than being immediately stowed in a hangar, Atlantis is to be outfitted with a fresh fuel tank and boosters as a mission-ready rescue vehicle for Nasa's last scheduled shuttle flight.
