Atlantis heat shield cleared for landing

NASA approved space shuttle Atlantis’ heat shield for reentry today, one day removed from a repair performed to a damaged thermal protection blanket. Also, all critical computers that failed aboard the ISS are now functioning normally.

Carpenter Newton reporting for Digital Journal –– After a series of trying days in space after the failure of critical computers aboard the International Space Station, luck seemed to be changing for the ten astronauts currently orbiting high in the atmosphere. Shortly after the STS-117 crew received their wake-up call, Mission Control radioed that Atlantis’ protective heat shield, which was damaged on launch and repaired yesterday during a spacewalk by Danny Olivas, had been cleared for reentry and landing. Atlantis is scheduled to touch down at Kennedy Space Center next Thursday. “That’s great news, Houston. Thanks a lot,” Commander Rick Sturckow said in reply to Houston. Saturday was a less hectic day for the Atlantis crew. Most operations revolved around supply transfer from the shuttle to the space station, which included a 55 pound transfer of oxygen. Other tasks included preparation for the fourth and final spacewalk, scheduled for tomorrow. The EVA will be conducted by Mission Specialists Patrick Forrester and Steven Swanson. Both men will conduct several get ahead tasks while outside the space station, including adjusting a debris shield, opening a vent, and setting up a LAN network. Both the STS-117 and ISS crews participated in a traditional mid-mission news conference, where they fielded questions from media in the United States. All Critical Russian Computers Back Online Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov were able to get the remainder of the navigation computers that failed earlier in the week back online today. “Currently, they have all six computers [three lanes] up while we do some additional troubleshooting to understand the environment and how it affects the computers. The bottom line is it appears to everyone that the command and control type computers are functioning just fine,” Mike Suffredini, ISS Program Manager, said during tonight’s Mission Status Briefing. Engineers are now fairly certain that Monday’s installation of a new truss on the station caused some sort of change in the power configuration to the computers, which prevented them from restarting properly. Should everything continue to go well between now and Monday, the Atlantis undocking will proceed as normal on Tuesday. “If all goes according to plan and the checkout goes well, we will transfer as much oxygen as our shuttle colleagues can afford to give us and then we will close the hatch Monday evening and have the shuttle depart on Tuesday,” Suffredini said.