Providing more than five tons of supplies and equipment, the space shuttle Atlantis closed on Sunday International Space Station at the beginning, the course for the 37th shuttle program and final berth for the Assembly of the laboratory began in 1998.
To 6 p.m. et, one of the four general-purpose computers Atlantis - GPC-3 - inadvertently closed himself in a process of "Awakening" and flight controllers told the crew to go ahead without it. As it turns, GPC - 3 experienced a similar judgment during a flight in 2008.
"It turns out that we have seen something like that quite recently on (shuttle mission) STS-122," astronaut Steve Robinson by radio to Mission control. "" "". I don't know what you want to do the common factors, but it was the orbiter, the same CPM and the same MS-2. "He was referring to the mission specialist No. 2, Rex Walheim, one of the four current crew members Atlantis.
"Yeah, Rex told me the story," Commander Christopher Ferguson replied.
Crew of the shuttle boats for damage verification
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Commentator Rob Navias mission NASA's control, said that the loss of a general-purpose computer would have no impact on rendezvous and docking.
"GPC - 3A said himself to disable itself, at the bottom, at the time wherever we go in what is called an expansion set for the appointment," he said. "This is when all the computers are grandis... in support of the appointment activity." The screen to switch the GPC runs under thought he went into a rest stop and closes. It will not be delivered in all of the PDC until after dock of the International Space Station and will probably not be recovered until Monday morning. »
The Terminal phase of the two-day visit was to begin at 8: 29 am EDT with a rocket shooting to begin final eight nautical miles from the laboratory of the closing complex.
Approaching from behind and below, Ferguson plans to stop briefly about 600 feet directly in the space station, Atlantis guiding with a manoeuvre of back flip computer to expose the heat shield tiles on the underside of the orbiter camera on the station. The crew of laboratory, with 1 000 mm, 800 mm and 400 mm telephoto lenses, will be the thermal shield in exquisite detail of the photo, then digital images to, team NASA to assessment of damage to the Johnson Space Center in Houston in downlink.
The spectacular field of manoeuvre or RPM, is a standard procedure post-Columbia to help analysts to ensure that the shuttle's thermal shield came through launch in good shape and is up to the rigours of the re-entry. The RPM imagery is combined with the photograph of ascension and radar data, with readings of sensors of the impact and results of the analyses the laser nose Atlantis and advanced wings that were collected Saturday to provide a detailed assessment of heat shield before Atlantis is disabled for the entry.
With the full RPM, Ferguson will guide Endeavour until a point approximately 300 feet directly opposite the station with the nose cone of the shuttle to deep space and module docking port to the front of the laboratory payload bay.
"And then Commander Chris Ferguson guide Atlantis for his final approach and docking with the international space station," Shuttle Flight Director said Kwatsi Alibaruho. "Once more, with a crew reduced (four), the deployment of the crew in the cockpit will be a little different, but they were able to get a good flow and we have repeated the scenario of an appointment with the crew and we are pleased to participate in this last appointment with the International Space Station." This will be a great day, and I think that we will achieve some great images of the shuttle on its final approach. »
Pending allow Ferguson, Walheim, pilot Douglas Hurley and Sandra Magnus is on expedition 28 Commander Andre Borisenko, Alexander Samokutyaev, Sergei Volkov, Ronald Garan, Michael Fossum and Satoshi Furukawa.
"It is the 37th flight of the shuttle to the space station, and the first flight was in 1998 when Endeavour delivered the first element of the U.S. and it attaches to the first Russian element which had been launched," said the post of Flight Director Chris Edelen. "This is therefore we are 13 years later, the space station is now more than 900,000 books, it is great that a football field of a club across, it houses a multinational team of six are research in biology and medicine, astronomy, physics, fluid and materials science.".
He said "space station much was thrown into orbit by the space shuttle". "It is assembled by teams of spacewalks from the shuttle and its been replenished by the space shuttle over the years.". The space station literally would not have been possible without the contribution of the space shuttle. »
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But keeping the station provided after the retirement of the shuttle fleet will be a major challenge for NASA and its international partners. Two companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, build ships without crew to support logistics U.S. shipments after a series of flight testing end of this year and early 2012.
Atlantis mission has been added to the manifest shuttle earlier this year to deliver a final supplies and equipment load as a bulwark against the problems that could delay commercial cargo vessels. The supplies and equipment delivered by Atlantis, as well as provisions delivered by cargo ships without a pilot European, Japanese and Russian, will support operations normal station by 2012.
"The main objective of the mission STS-135 is logistics, raising supplies available to the space station by 2012," said Edelen. "It is a key because that our suppliers of commercial cargo will come on line in 2012 at the beginning and in providing supplies, we need to go through all of next year which will provide a little place that these companies enter the difficult flight test phase."
After a brief security of information, the combined crews will get to the work of transfer of equipment from the shuttle to the station and using laboratory robotic arm to remove perches inspection of Atlantis heat shield of the payload bay, so it can be handed over to offshore to the Shuttle arm. The boom is moved to provide clearance additional in the payload main Atlantis, an Italian-built cargo module, is extracted from the Bay Monday and attached to the port of Earth of the Harmony module to unload forward-facing.
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