The return to Earth is scheduled for 5:56:58 a.m. EDT Thursday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew stowed the Ku-band antenna, used for high-data rate communications and television from space, at 11:34 a.m. and will go to sleep at 1:29 p.m. Mission managers have cleared Atlantis’ heat shield for entry after reviewing results of the “late inspection” survey of the shuttle’s reinforced carbon carbon. The official Spaceflight Meteorology Group landing forecast for Kennedy remains very favorable.
This image of the International Space Station was taken by Atlantis’ STS-135 crew during a fly around as the shuttle departed the station on Tuesday, July 19, 2011. STS-135 is the final shuttle mission to the orbital laboratory. Image Credit: NASA
An additional image reveals, silhouetted against the Earth, Atlantis flying into the rising Sun. This photograph was taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station on July 19, 2011. On July 20, the shuttle undocked from the station for the final time and began preparations to return home. During their 13 days in space, the shuttle astronauts supplied the International Space Station with a new logistics module, tested tools, technologies, and techniques to refuel satellites in space, and collected old equipment from the space station.
Atlantis is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center, concluding NASA’s 30-year space shuttle program. In addition to the science the shuttle and earlier programs enabled, human space flight has given us a unique view of planet Earth, which includes the now iconic spectacle of Earth rising over the Moon taken during the first lunar landing on July 20, 1969, and the photographs taken from Atlantis during its last full day in space on July 20, 2011. In fact every flight is a mission to planet Earth, as described in the Earth Observatory’s tribute to the shuttle program.
Astronaut photograph ISS028-E-017845 was acquired on July 19, 2011, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 28 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. The animation has been motion-stabilized. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Holli Riebeek.
