14 DAY TRIAL // Under picture-perfect weather, the space shuttle Atlantis landed on the Kennedy Space Center's (KSC) Runway 33 at 09:44 am EST (1444 GMT), wrapping up the successful STS-129 assembly flight to the International Space Station (ISS). After 10 days and 19 hours into space and more than 4.4 million miles traveled around the planet, the shuttle and its seven-astronaut crew are currently safe at the Cape Canaveral, Florida facility. The flight marks the last time a station crew member is brought back to Earth aboard a space shuttle, as NASA plans to withdraw its space fleet in September 2010.
During the seven days the shuttle spent docked on the space station, it delivered more than 15 tons of supplies and scientific equipment to the laboratory. All the supplies were installed either inside or outside the facility. Two large containers featuring spare parts that the station needs to manage with until 2015-2016 have also been removed from the shuttle's cargo bay and attached to the outer hull of the station. The parts are too large to be carried on Russian Soyuz capsules, for example, and therefore can only be ferried on the US shuttles.
Three spacewalks were conducted in the week that Atlantis spent docked to the outpost. Two new antennas were added, and an oxygen tank was replaced. Several new scientific experiments were also installed on the outer hull, including one related to nanomaterials research. Additional maintenance work was performed on several areas of the station, and a number of modules were prepared for the February 2010 arrival of NASA's new contribution to the international effort, the Node 3 module, called Tranquility.
The extra passenger is former Expedition 20 and 21 ISS flight engineer, Nicole Stott, who has just completed her three-month stay aboard the orbital laboratory. She is currently scheduled to be the last ISS astronaut to return home on a space shuttle. The remaining five flights, which the American space agency has planned for its space fleet, will deal exclusively with assembling the station that is currently 86 percent complete. By September 2010, when the shuttles are to be retired, the outpost needs to be 100 percent finished. Crew rotation will be ensured by the Russian space agency.