Tue, Apr 20, 2010
Weather Caused The Shuttle's First Two Landing Opportunities To
Be Waved Off
Space shuttle Discovery and seven astronauts ended a 15-day
journey of more than 6.2 million miles with a 0908 EDT landing
Tuesday at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The landing was
made in the third arrival window for the shuttle, after the first
two attempts were waved off due to poor weather at the Florida
landing site.
NASA Photo
The STS-131 mission to the International Space Station delivered
science racks, new crew sleeping quarters, equipment and
supplies. During three spacewalks, the crew installed a new
ammonia storage tank for the station's cooling system, replaced a
gyroscope for the station's navigation system and retrieved a
Japanese experiment from outside the Kibo laboratory for
examination on Earth.
Alan Poindexter commanded the flight and was joined by Pilot Jim
Dutton and Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio, Dottie
Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, Clay Anderson, and Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Naoko Yamazaki. Lindenburger
is the last of three teachers selected as mission specialists in
the 2004 Educator-Astronaut class to fly on the shuttle.
With Discovery and its crew safely home, the stage is set for
launch of shuttle Atlantis on its STS-132 mission, targeted to lift
off May 14. Atlantis' 12-day flight will deliver the Russian-built
Mini Research Module to the station along with six new batteries to
store power gathered by the Port 6 solar arrays. Shuttle mission
STS-132 is the final scheduled flight of Atlantis. Following
STS-132, two more shuttle flights are scheduled before the fleet is
retired.
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