Sts 122

cyrusdvirus

(With apologies to Zircona for the theft of his image!!)

Atlantis is scheduled to launch next Thursday, on the 51.6° Launch inclination

squonk

Any idea yet of times we can go outside to look tonight. Aroung 22:30 isn't it?

cyrusdvirus

According to the NASA STS122 Mission Info page, scheduled launch is 2.45 EST which is around 7.45 GMT

Trotter

As a complete amateur, but very interested, what could I see outside tonight?

I'm stuck to the NASA live feed here.. so interesting.

redman

You probably won't see it after launch , but watch it chase the ISS tomorrow evening.

www.heavens=above.com

Laphroaig52

If you want to 'see' the space station (and the shuttle which is docked to it right now) keep an eye on this page:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/skywatch.cgi?country=Ireland

The evenings have been clear recently so it's been very prominent.

Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder...Honeybunch's observation after being dragged out to the back garden on a cold night was that 'It's just a light in the sky'. Sometimes girls just don't get it....

cyrusdvirus

Well, Atlantis is down safely, which opens up the shootdown window for that sick satellite...

Atlantis shuttle returns to Earth

Atlantis and its crew helped install a new lab on the ISS


Shuttle landing
The Atlantis orbiter has touched down on Earth after a 13-day mission to cement Europe's position on the International Space Station (ISS).
The spacecraft and its crew installed the 12.8-tonne Columbus science lab, an achievement that makes Europe a full member of the $100bn platform project.

Atlantis landed at Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 1407 GMT.

Now that the shuttle is down, the US military will be allowed to shoot an ailing spy satellite out of the sky.

The missile firing, which is likely to take place over the Pacific Ocean, could not be carried out until after Atlantis had returned for fear the ship might encounter debris on its high-speed descent.

Nasa officials earlier reported that four small steering jets on Atlantis had failed, but they stressed these thrusters were not needed to help de-orbit the shuttle or control its glide through the atmosphere.

Riding home on Atlantis was US astronaut Dan Tani, who has been a long-stay resident on the ISS since October.

His place on the platform has been taken by Frenchman Leopold Eyharts who went up with the shuttle and who will spend the coming weeks commissioning the Columbus lab.

A Columbus tour
The 1.3bn-euro ($1.8bn; £0.9bn) module is Europe's major contribution to the science endeavours on the station, and the first part of the ISS it will control, through an operations centre in Oberpfaffenhofen in southern Germany.

The lab's installation means the European Space Agency (Esa) acquires "rights" under the space station project plan, principally to fly one European astronaut every two years to the platform for a six-month stay.

Columbus is booked for an extensive programme of research that will take in experiments from the life sciences, materials science, fluid physics and other disciplines.

Knowledge gained in the weightless conditions experienced on the platform are expected to aid the development of more advanced electronics, new alloys, novel drugs, and better crops, to name just a few examples.

In addition to fitting Columbus, the Atlantis crew replaced an empty nitrogen tank on the station and retrieved a failed control-moment gyroscope that is one of four such mechanisms used to keep the ISS pointing in the right direction.

The mission has been deeply satisfying for Nasa. It now feels it has the shuttle system working at optimum efficiency.

The fuel sensor glitch experienced during recent launch campaigns seems to have been solved, and the shedding of shuttle tank insulation foam - the fatal flaw that downed Columbia and her crew in 2003 - has been minimised.


Agency managers have expressed confidence that they can complete the construction of the ISS by the time the orbiter fleet is retired at the end of 2010 to make way for a new human launch system.

Already, the Endeavour orbiter is on the launch pad at Kennedy ready for an 11 March flight.

Ten more shuttle flights will be required after its return, a manifest it looks set to shoulder along with the Discovery shuttle.

Atlantis, on current planning, has completed its ISS duties and is set for one last outing in August or September this year to service the Hubble Space Telescope However, Nasa says no final decision has been taken on Atlantis' immediate future.

For Europe, attention turns to its new space station logistics ship, known as the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV).

Dubbed "Jules Verne" for its maiden voyage, the ATV is entering final launch preparations at the European Kourou spaceport in French Guiana where it is expected to leave Earth on 8 March.

The ATV will haul just under five tonnes of cargo (food, water, fuel and experimental equipment) to the ISS.

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Preliminary launch dates for shuttles in the rest of 2008:

11 March, Endeavour: to deliver the first part of the Japanese science complex known as Kibo and the Canadian Dextre robot to the ISS
24 April, Discovery: to loft the second and main component of the Japanese Kibo lab together with its exterior robot arm
28 August, Atlantis: a flight to service the Hubble Space Telescope
16 October, Endeavour: a cargo flight to the ISS using the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module in Endeavour's payload bay
4 December, Discovery: taking up the fourth starboard "backbone" segment for the ISS; and the fourth set of solar arrays and batteries
Because Atlantis will not be able to reach the space station if it gets into trouble, or is damaged, on its Hubble flight, the Endeavour orbiter will be made ready on the pad for a rescue mission in case it is needed.

Launch dates for the remaining seven flights in 2009/10 are under review. The crew of the space station is expected to rise from three to six in mid-2009.