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Station bustles with guests

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 18, 2006

CAPE CANAVERAL - The international space station's three residents bade farewell to one set of houseguests Sunday and prepared for the arrival of more visitors.

The sendoff of space shuttle Atlantis' six astronauts Sunday was the start of a week of heavy traffic at the space station, the equivalent of rush hour in space.

A Russian Soyuz vehicle ferrying two new station crew members and the first female space tourist was set to launch early today, followed by the departure of a cargo ship from the station. The cargo ship, which has been filled with used equipment and trash, will be sent down to harmlessly burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.

The Soyuz was scheduled to arrive at the space station early Wednesday, and Atlantis was set to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida later that day.

"As you need more air traffic controllers when the airport gets busier, that's the situation that we're facing," U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria said from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where he will blast off in the Soyuz.

Early Sunday, Atlantis pilot Chris Ferguson carefully eased Atlantis through a tight corridor away from the station. About 450 feet away, he fired jets to maneuver Atlantis around the space lab so the crew could take photos of the addition it had installed.

In three arduous space walks, the Atlantis crew unpacked and installed a pair of solar wings that will ultimately generate a quarter of the space station's power. The wings were the first addition to the orbiting space lab since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Mission Control had asked the crew to take photos of the solar arrays, a rotating joint that will allow the solar arrays to follow the sun, and covers where two bolts that escaped during the space walks might be hidden.

Atlantis' astronauts planned to keep the vehicle about 80 miles behind the space station for the next two days so that they can perform another thorough inspection of the shuttle's thermal protection skin. A similar inspection took place on the second day of the 11-day mission.

So far, no damage of the kind that doomed the space shuttle Columbia in 2003 has been found, and NASA managers have found nothing that would keep Atlantis from landing Wednesday.

"The shuttle mission, although not over yet, has just been extraordinarily successful," said Phil Engelauf, NASA's chief of the flight directors office.

A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying Lopez-Alegria, Russian astronaut Mikhail Tyurin and the world's first female space tourist, American Anousheh Ansari, is expected to blast off today. It will return to Earth on Sept. 28 with Ansari and two of the station's current inhabitants: American Jeff Williams and Russian Pavel Vinogradov, who have been on the station since April.

European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter of Germany, who arrived aboard the space shuttle Discovery in July, will remain on the station.

[Last modified September 18, 2006, 01:48:50]