Atlantis to Launch Friday

According to NASA and Kennedy Space Center (KSC), today's preparations and inspections were all successfully accomplished and showed no problem issues to track.

So at the Countdown Status Briefing, NASA Test Director Steve Payne said that STS-117 Atlantis is ready to launch. STS-117 Atlantis is the 21st shuttle mission to the International Space Station. The crew of six is headed by Commander Frederick Sturckow, who is a Marine colonel. The Pilot is Lee Archambault, who is an Air Force colonel.

Thursday night at 10:30 P.M. the launch pad's service structure is scheduled to be rolled away from Atlantis. The brilliant xenon light will then be turned on to illuminate Atlantis through the night. This will happen when all checks and inspections are successfully completed. There is no expectation of delay. Thursday, Director Payne said, "We're ready to fly tomorrow." Friday, June 8, 2007, is launch day for STS-117 Atlantis.

Atlantis is on a dual mission. First, it is going to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) and deliver and install new parts for modifications to the space station structure. Second, Atlantis is facilitating the rotation of crew members. Sunita L. Williams is returning to Earth aboard Atlantis, and Clay C. Anderson will remain aboard ISS.

Suni Williams was Flight Engineer for Expedition 15. She has been living on ISS since December 2006. Clayton Anderson, Expedition 15/16 Flight Engineer, will begin long-duration flight. He will return to Earth on mission STS-120.

The Atlantis mission will deliver starboard truss segments and the starboard solar arrays to ISS. These arrays are the complement to the port side solar arrays installed in September, 2006. A precise procedure for unfolding the arrays has been developed and was successfully used in 2006 to avoid the problems experienced in deploying the first solar arrays in 2000. The STS-117 crew will unfold the stacked arrays during the hours when ISS is in sunlight and will advance the unfolding slowly, which is more time consuming. When STS-115 followed this longer modified procedure, the solar arrays open without problem. The solar arrays "track the sun and generate power" for ISS.

The payload of Atlantis includes a 400-year old metal shipping tag that is an artifact of Jamestown, America's earliest English settlement. It was found at the bottom of a well, apparently discarded in 1611, during an archaeological dig at Jamestown. The artifact will make the round-trip journey to ISS and back to Earth to honor 400 years of exploration. After the celebratory flight on NASA's STS-117 Atlantis, the coin, which still bears the inscription "Yames Towne," will join hundreds of other Jamestowne artifacts in Jamestowne's new Archaearium museum.

STS-117 Atlantis is an important stepping stone to future exploration. As was explained in a live web-cast stream during Thursday's STS-117 countdown, NASA is aiming for a lunar exploration flight project to begin preparations in 2011. NASA and KSC will have to be prepared to successfully execute "constellation projects" that have multiple components that each require expert mission control, support and maintenance.

Constellation lunar projects, and those aiming beyond to Mars, will rely heavily on expert groups and subgroups and on space weather predictions. Space exploration depends heavily upon the increasing ability to predict solar storms called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that hurl tons of electrically charged particles through space. For this reason, NASA has put STEREO into space orbiting the sun. STEREO will provide data to enable measurements of distance and speed of CMEs. Astronauts on ISS and, more importantly, on the moon or on the way to Mars, will in the future have some warning of advancing solar storm CMEs and so will be able to protect themselves, their equipment, and their spacecraft.

The weather for Friday's launch is expected to pose no problem for fueling or for launch. The storms that may develop from the current high pressure ridge should be west of KSC. Propellant fueling is set to begin at 9:30 A. M. Friday morning. The other crew that will launch on Friday with Atlantis are mission specialists James Reilly II, Ph.D., Patrick Forrester, Steven Swanson, Ph.D., and John D. Olivas, Ph.D.