14 DAY TRIAL // The space shuttle Atlantis docked for the last time ever to the International Space Station on Sunday, July 10. This is also the last time that an American orbiter flies to the orbital lab. The final approach and the actual docking procedure took place flawlessly.
Before this happened, the shuttle rolled over and exposed its underbelly to the crew of Expedition 28. The astronauts snapped pictures of its heat shield, and relayed them to Mission Control, in Houston.
The data will be added to the readings taken by video cameras that recorded Atlantis' launch from aboard the delivery system, and also to readings collected by the crew during the shuttle's first day in orbit. The investigation seeks to determine whether the orbiter's heat shield is damaged.
After the safety procedure was completed, the shuttle was given green light to approach the ISS. The docking process completed at 11:07 am EDT (1507 GMT), precisely as scheduled by flight managers.
The two spacecraft were flying hundreds of kilometers above the Pacific Ocean, east of New Zealand, when the docking process completed. “Atlantis arriving. Welcome to the International Space Station for the last time,” Expedition 28 flight engineer Ron Garan said.
The two crews were reunited when the hatches between the spacecraft opened at 12:47pm EDT (1647 GMT). In the mean time, the astronauts conducted leak checks on the connection between Atlantis and the space station, Space reports.
“We have had an absolutely outstanding rendezvous and docking today. The docking was accomplished with very few issues at all. We're right on schedule,” NASA shuttle flight director Kwatsi Alibaruho said yesterday.
For the STS-135 mission, Atlantis is crewed by only four astronauts. Christopher Ferguson is the commander of the flight, while astronaut Douglas Hurley pilots the spacecraft. Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim are the mission specialists NASA selected to round up the crew.
Aboard the ISS, the six-astronaut crew that met up with the Atlantis crew are ISS Commander Andrey Borisenko and mission engineers Alexander Samokutyaev and Sergei Volkov, of the Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos), Ron Garan and Mike Fossum (NASA) and Satoshi Furukawa (JAXA).
The shuttle is scheduled to spend a total of 12 days in space, which means that it will arrive back at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), in Florida, on Wednesday, July 20. There are no extravehicular activities scheduled for the STS-135 crew.
The chair of the shuttle's mission management team, LeRoy Cain, said in recent press briefing that early analyses have revealed no significant issue with the shuttle's heat shield. “We don't have any anomalies – no significant issues. It's been a great start to this mission,” he said.