Atlantis Crew to Unload Massive Cargo Bin
The space shuttle Atlantis arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, and the crew this morning successfully attached a module that contains 9,403 pounds of space parts, equipment, and supplies.
After an historic final launch on Friday, Atlantis docked with the ISS at 11:07am Eastern time Sunday morning while both were flying 240 miles high, east of New Zealand. It was the 12th and final time Atlantis docked with the space station, and the 46th time a NASA shuttle docked with a space station overall; nine to Mir and 37 to the ISS.
The hatches between Atlantis and the ISS were opened at 12:47pm, and Atlantis crew members—Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim—joined the astronauts already aboard the ISS—Expedition 28 Commander Andrey Borisenko and Flight Engineers Alexander Samokutyaev and Sergei Volkov of Russia, Satoshi Furukawa from Japan, and NASA's Ron Garan and Mike Fossum.
There was little time to rest, however. The crew got right to work removing a huge storage bin known as the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module from the shuttle and attaching it to the ISS.
Using a robotic arm in the ISS's cupola, Hurley and Magnus lifted Raffaello out of the shuttle at 5:47am this morning and installed it on the Earth-facing port of the station's Harmony node at 6:46am. Raffaello measures 21-feet long and 15-foot wide, and is packed full of 9,403 pounds of spare parts, spare equipment, and other supplies, including 2,677 pounds of food that will sustain station operations for a year. Even though NASA will retire its shuttle program after this mission, the ISS will remain staffed and will be serviced by Russian vehicles and, eventually, commercial spacecrafts.
Raffaello is held in place by 16 bolts, NASA said. This morning, the crew will conduct leak checks before activating the module at 11:24am and going in at 1:39pm. It will take about 130 hours to remove all the equipment and supplies from the module and then load it back up—mostly with ISS trash—for the trip back to Earth.
NASA also said one of Atlantis' general purpose computers (GPC 3) is again in working order after a software reload. It failed on Sunday during docking, but all five GPCs are now up and running.
The Atlantis crew is scheduled for a 12-day mission, though NASA hopes to extend that by one day.
For more on NASA's shuttle program, see the slideshow above.
