Where is sts 135 landing

The Shuttle is a big aircraft and creates a big shockwave as it transits from supersonic to subsonic speed. There were 4 things that surprised me about the landing… 1 It was dark… Much darker than I had planned for meaning I really had to push the ISO on the camera and any longer lens would not have helped. Getting closer with a faster lens is how the NASA photographers get some of those amazing images.

We could not see it at the end of the runway, but only as it broke the light beams and cast its shadow downrange. The media presence at the landing was thick with much higher interest than initially thought.

Cameras, reporters and media trucks from all corners of the world were present. These sorts of media events are always a little thrilling with the different languages being spoken and live feeds going out all over the planet. The sun was breaking and Alecia Johnson, also from Salt Lake it turns out and I decided to head out for breakfast before returning to explore Kennedy Space Center some more and take the tour of the grounds. I also managed to come back the next day to explore a bit more before heading out to catch my flight home.

One of the amazing things for me about Kennedy Space Center is that is it also a wildlife refuge with an amazing diversity of bird and aquatic life. Seeing the first wild manatee of my life was as exciting as seeing the Shuttle land. Driving around KSC in the light of day and seeing the runway where Atlantis landed the previous morning was a real eye opener.

In addition to the aforementioned wildlife refuge, the Cape has launch sites, vehicle recovery and processing facilities distributed over a huge amount of property with additional adjacent US Air Force facilities where many defense satellites are launched into orbit. It really was a historical ride back in time being able to see Launchpad 39 and some of the other facilities, though I really would have like to have seen some more of the older abandoned launch facilities on the Cape.

In addition to the scope of facilities on the Cape, the size of some of them are truly stunning. It truly is a monstrous building with a history that goes back to the Saturn V program. There are amazing historical re-creations of the Apollo launch command center, where they simulate the original Saturn V launch by replaying the launch sequence audio while illuminating stations in the command center where the dialogue originated.

After the launch simulation, you exit into a portion of the exhibit that contains a beautifully preserved Saturn V rocket lying on its side with all stages and one of my favorite spacecraft, the Apollo Landing Module giving you some perspective of how big these rockets were. Again, difficult to represent in a couple of photographs without more planning, but take my word for it.

They are sizable and enormously complex machines. Discovery returns to Earth with its crew of seven after successfully completing mission STS, lasting nearly nine days and 3. The crew includes mission commander Curtis L. Brown, Jr. Lindsey, mission specialists Scott E. Parazynski, Stephen K. Last Atlantis- STS landing. The laboratory is a skeletal avionics version of the shuttle that uses actual orbiter hardware and flight software. The facility even carries the official orbiter designation as OV Thank you for protecting us and bringing this program to such a fitting end," concluded Ferguson.

EDT, followed by the nose gear at and wheels stop at a. Their landing saw the culmination of Atlantis' day STS mission, which restocked the International Space Station ISS with 9, pounds of spare equipment and other supplies from the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module, including 2, pounds of food that will sustain space station operations for the next year. Raffaello was then repacked with 5, pounds of unneeded materials from the ISS that were brought back to Earth aboard Atlantis.

STS completed trips around the Earth in the course of 12 days, 18 hours and 27 minutes while logging 5,, miles. This was the 78th shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center and the 19th to land there during the night.

The fourth of NASA's five space shuttle orbiters to fly, Atlantis has logged days in space over the course of 4, orbits travelling ,, miles. For 30 years, the space shuttle traveled ,, miles and 21, orbits of the planet on missions, carrying humans and 3. Space News space history and artifacts articles Messages space history discussion forums Sightings worldwide astronaut appearances Resources selected space history documents.

Today in Space Shuttle History. Configuring Atlantis for its return home. Deorbit burn. Michael Fossum made his way to the platform and installed two backup tools, called Contingency Operations Large Adapter Assembly Tools - or COLTs - onto the hardware that held the pump module in place.

The COLTs allowed the crew to access contingency bolts on the back of the hardware, in case the spacewalkers run into problems using the primary bolt to install the pump module in the shuttle's cargo bay.

While Michael Fossum worked with the COLTs, Ronald Garan met the station's robotic arm at the stowage platform, and installed a foot restraint on it so that he could climb into it and free up his hands to carry the pump module back to Atlantis. To remove the pump module from the stowage platform, Ronald Garan grabbed onto the pump module, while Michael Fossum released the bolt holding it in place. That allowed Ronald Garan to lift the module off of the stowage platform and fly it to the shuttle's cargo bay.

Once there, Ronald Garan drove the same bolt to attach the module to the carrier inside the cargo bay, securing it for the return to Earth. Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan then switched places, giving Michael Fossum a turn on the end of the robotic arm. Michael Fossum lifted it out, and flew it via robotic arm to the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, or Dextre , as the robot is called, on the Destiny laboratory.

He bolted the experiment onto platform on Dextre used to hold equipment and spare parts that Dextre is working with. Ronald Garan assisted. Because that experiment was situated near the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer AMS , which was also installed on STS , and the thermal covers on the AMS were expected to need some time to air out once the experiment was installed, the STS crew was asked not to expose this segment of the experiment until the gases in the AMS cover had some time to dissipate.

The crew started the day 26 percent through the combined 15, pounds 6, kg of cargo to transfer in or out of Raffaello. The MPLM was launched with 9, pounds 4.

The supplies and equipment that Atlantis astronauts delivered to the orbiting outpost was expected to keep the station well supplied through The crew had some help from the station crew of Andrei Borisenko , Sergei Volkov and Satoshi Furukawa in the transfer operations.

Crew members also opened the Pressurized Mating Adapter PMA -3 , attached to the Tranquility node, and stored some of the material from Raffaello there. On flight day 7 the shuttle astronauts went to sleep as planned but were awakened by the sound of a master alarm on board Atlantis at UTC. The alarm prompted Commander Christopher Ferguson to head to Atlantis and evaluate the issue.

GPC -4 was running system management software at the time of failure. The transfer took about 45 minutes, bypassing an expected period of loss of signal by utilizing communications at White Sands, New Mexico. After activating GPC -2 and with Atlantis in good shape, Christopher Ferguson and other crew members went back to sleep.

Flight controllers in Houston also downloaded data dumps to carefully monitor the computer to make sure that it was running normally. While Christopher Ferguson and Douglas Hurley focused on computer troubleshooting, Mission Specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim together with the station crew continued to work on cargo transfers between Atlantis the Space Station. Early on the flight day 9, Commander Christopher Ferguson and Pilot Douglas Hurley also spent some time working to successfully repair the door that gives the crew access to the LiOH canisters.

Mission Specialist Sandra Magnus spent about an hour and a half in the morning taking microbial air samples on various locations in the space station. The collected samples will be returned for study and further analysis.

Mission Specialist Rex Walheim along with station crew member Michael Fossum continued work with spacewalking equipment in the Quest airlock. Some of them will be left on the station, and will be utilized during an upcoming Russian spacewalk on August 03, Douglas Hurley working with station crew member Ronald Garan stored some of the cargo in Atlantis's middeck to be returned.

Since no astronaut was riding in the mid-deck, on the way back, it was expected to be fully packed with pounds kg of cargo. Among cargo brought to the space station, pounds 1, kg were also in the mid-deck. After their midday meal on flight day 10, Mission Specialist Sandra Magnus and Commander Christopher Ferguson worked a little over an hour continuing to move experiments and equipment to and from Atlantis's middeck. Another couple of noteworthy middeck payloads that were transferred included the mass spectrometer in the mass constituent analyzer, a device in the U.

Flight Engineer Ronald Garan removed the broken spectrometer and moved it to Atlantis's middeck for return. With station's Canadarm2 locked onto Raffaello, commands were issued at UTC to begin the releasing operations of the 16 motorized bolts holding the MPLM in place on the station's Node 2.

The move was completed by around UTC. The securing of the Raffaello in the shuttle's payload bay marked the 10 th and final transfer of an MPLM in the history of the Space Shuttle program. Shortly after hatches between the two spacecraft were closed, the crew returned to Atlantis. They carried out tasks to prepare for the undocking from the Space Station. Christopher Ferguson and Douglas Hurley installed the centerline camera while hatch leak checks were still under way.

Douglas Hurley and Rex Walheim also checked out the rendezvous tools.