Atlantis undocked from the space station at 10:42 Eastern time this morning. The computers on the station appear to be functioning now (well, 4 out of 6; the other two will be replaced). The Shuttle crew has their first chance to land on Thursday afternoon at 1:54 p.m. Eastern time.
They are bringing home astronaut Sunita Williams, who now holds the record for longest duration in space by a woman: by the time she lands, it will have been 193 days or so depending on the exact time of touchdown. There has been no word on whether she was able to watch any Firefly episodes, however.
June 19th, 2007 at 8:56 am
Some really amazing video of the ISS, and nice views of Atlantis, too.
(Plus a few UFO’s ;)) (FOD, actually, probably ice kicked loose from the earlier water dump.)
June 19th, 2007 at 9:13 am
And better yet, folks on the ground will get to see the ISS and Atlantis fly overhead in tandem tonight — at least, if you live near Detroit, Washington DC, San Francisco or Denver (time to warm up the ’scope, BA).
For timing information and sky charts, see http://heavens-above.com.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Just saw them flying over Italy, awesome view!
June 19th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
I just got done watching the ISS and shuttle pass over my house with my daughter….Awesome to say the least!!!!!!! they came from the northwest and “set” in the south east. they were both the brightest things in the sky. They went dim a little before they went out of line of sight as they lost the sun’s light. It was 10:34pm in Cleveland.
……and ID and Kent Hovind still suck
June 19th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Everything I’ve heard is all 6 computers are working fine. But they’re leaving 2 of them unplugged just in case there are more power problems, since they had to bypass what is essentially a surge protector to get them working. If something happens that blasts the now-unprotected computers (although there is also surge protection built into both the solar array power feeds and the internal power supplies in the computers, so they aren’t really unprotected), they’ll fire up the other 2 computers.
They are sending up something (not sure what) on the next Progress supply flight, which last I heard had been moved up a week or two. They could be sending up new power supplies or surge protectors or complete replacement computers, I don’t know what. Maybe they are planning to replace a couple of the computers so they can bring the old ones back to earth (next shuttle flight?) so they can try to figure out what happened. AFAIK, they still aren’t certain, except it seemed to be power-related and happened about the time they attached the new solar arrays, but before they actually connected the power cables.
June 19th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Progress M-61 could be as soon as July 22nd now (not yet confirmed, though). Apparently they will be sending up at least one pair of computer replacement spares (1 terminal box, 1 C&C box) that include the power mod bypass fixes.
June 19th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
[…] I wrote earlier today, the Space Shuttle Atlantis separated from the space station Tuesday morning. I happened to stumble upon the fact that they would be close together for a while, […]
June 20th, 2007 at 1:03 am
Tonight here in central Oregon they passed from near Venus, past Saturn, Regulus and right through the center of the crescent moon. Quite spectacular! Tomorrow night they will be further apart but will pass directly overhead (88 deg elev) going from WNW to ESE starting at about 9:19 pm. Should be similar for most westerners. Heavens-Above says about magnitude -1 for both of them. Last night tracked them (docked) with a manual Dob. Saw sort of an “H” shape.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:34 am
(FOD, actually, probably ice kicked loose from the earlier water dump.)
In the words of Wally Schirra, “The constellation URION”
June 20th, 2007 at 3:24 am
Great view from Indiana - appeared in the north at 10:33 (19th) and took about 3 minutes until they disappeared in the east. Took binoculars, but they weren’t needed. They were really moving fast.
They’ll be visible again tonight (20th). Input your country, state, and nearest city to get your time and location for viewing:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/