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'Atlantis' cleared for return to cape on Thursday

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 17, 2007

HOUSTON - Atlantis was cleared Saturday to return to Earth this week after the space shuttle's heat shield was judged capable of surviving the intense heat of re-entry.

Atlantis is set to land at Cape Canaveral on Thursday, although NASA officials were still deciding whether to keep the shuttle at the international space station for an extra day because of a failure of computers.

"That's great news, " Atlantis commander Rick Sturckow said of the landing plan.

The shuttle's 11-day space station construction mission had already been extended to 13 days so a thermal-protection blanket could be fixed during a space walk. NASA has been particularly sensitive about the space shuttles' heat shields since the Columbia accident killed seven astronauts in 2003.

Russian cosmonauts struggled Saturday to complete the restoration of the computers, but Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov got four of six processors on two computers working again on Friday, and on Saturday they got the remaining two processors back on line.

Engineers in Moscow and Houston had not determined what caused the failure.

The astronauts started turning on systems - such as an oxygen machine, a water processor and a carbon dioxide remover - that had been turned off while the computers were down. Today, they planned to test the station's orientation system, which will be the final benchmark for deciding whether the computers work properly and whether the shuttle needs to stay an extra day.

"The bottom line is it appears that the command and control type computers are functioning just fine, " said Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager.

In preparation for Tuesday's scheduled undocking of the shuttle, the astronauts spent Saturday moving supplies and trash between the shuttle and station.

Friday's tasks included space walks to repair the torn thermal blanket on Atlantis and to retract a solar energy wing that will be moved to a different location on the space station.

Fast Facts:

Astronaut sets spaceflight mark for woman

U.S. astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams set a record Saturday for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. Williams, who has lived at the space station since December and will return to Earth aboard Atlantis, surpassed the record of 188 days set by Shannon Lucid at the Mir space station in 1996. "It's just that I'm in the right place at the right time, " Williams said when Mission Control congratulated her on the record. "Even when the station has little problems, it's just a beautiful, wonderful place to live." In February, Williams set a record for the most time spent spacewalking by a woman, kicking off a year of achievements by women in space:

- U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson in October will become the first woman to command the space station.

- Also in October, Pam Melroy will become the second woman to command a shuttle mission; Eileen Collins was the first in 1999.

[Last modified June 17, 2007, 01:16:14]