Atlantis cleared for landing after heat blanket repaired

Published Sunday, June 17, 2007

HOUSTON (AP) - Mission managers yesterday cleared Atlantis to land this week after concluding the space shuttle’s heat shield was safe enough to withstand the intense heat of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.

"That’s great news!" Atlantis commander Rick Sturckow radioed to Mission Control after receiving word that Atlantis is cleared to land Thursday at Cape Canaveral, Fla.

The clearance came a day after astronaut Danny Olivas, during a spacewalk, stapled down a loose thermal blanket that covered an engine pod near the shuttle’s tail. The blanket peeled back during the June 8 launch from the Kennedy Space Center.

NASA has been sensitive about the space shuttles’ heat shields ever since the Columbia accident killed seven astronauts in 2003. A piece of insulating foam from the shuttle’s external tank came loose during launch, striking Columbia’s wing and allowing fiery gases to penetrate it during re-entry.

Atlantis’ astronauts plan another inspection of the heat shield after the shuttle undocks from the international space station, scheduled for Tuesday.

However, mission managers might still extend the shuttle’s docking at the station by a day to buy more time for engineers in Moscow and Houston to figure out why the computer system on the Russian side of the station crashed.

Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov were able to get four of six processors on two computers working again Friday by using a cable to bypass a circuit board. Yesterday, they began turning back on some crucial systems, including a carbon dioxide scrubber, which was shut down more than four days earlier. They also planned to use more jumper cables to try to restart the two remaining processors that weren’t working.

"In the last 24 hours, we’ve had a lot of successes," flight director Holly Ridings said yesterday morning.