Atlantis scheduled to undock June 17th and return to Earth on the 19th.
(CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida) - The Atlantis crew entered the International Space Station for the first time after the hatches between the station and Space Shuttle Atlantis opened at 5:20 PM EDT Sunday.
Space Shuttle Atlantis and crew arrived at the International Space Station at 3:36 PM, delivering a new truss segment and crew member to the orbital outpost.
One of the first major tasks is the station crew rotation.
STS-117 Mission Specialist Clayton Anderson will switch places with Expedition 15 Flight Engineer Suni Williams, who will be wrapping up a six-month tour of duty on the station.
Anderson is scheduled to stay on the station until he returns to Earth with STS-120 later this year.
Anderson will officially become a member of Expedition 15 when his custom-made seat liner is swapped out with Williams’ in the Soyuz spacecraft docked to the station.
The crews will prepare for Monday’s installation of the Starboard 3 and 4 (S3/S4) truss segment and the first of three scheduled STS-117 spacewalks.
The crews will use the shuttle robotic arm to lift the S3/S4 out of Atlantis’ payload bay and hand it off to the station arm.
The S3/S4, which contains a new set of solar arrays, is scheduled to be attached to the station at 10:08 AM Monday.
Then, STS-117 Mission Specialists John “Danny” Olivas and Jim Reilly will make connections between the station and the new truss segment during the spacewalk, which is set to kick off at 1:53 PM.
About an hour before docking, Sturckow and Archambault guided the shuttle through a back-flip maneuver that allowed the Expedition 15 crew to photograph the shuttle’s protective heat-resistant tiles. The imagery will be sent to engineers on Earth for analysis.
STS-117 is the 21st shuttle mission to visit the station.
Atlantis scheduled to undock June 17th and return to Earth on the 19th.
Atlantis Docks with International Space StationSalem-News.com