The six astronauts set to ride NASA’s Atlantis orbiter to the International Space Station (ISS) are expected to land at the agency’s Florida spaceport at 5:00 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) today for several days of training and a launch day dress rehearsal. 

Atlantis’ STS-115 astronaut crew, commanded by veteran shuttle flyer Brent Jett, is expected to land at the Shuttle Landing Facility of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida after flying from their Houston-based training center.

Jett and his crewmates are expected to depart Houston’s Ellington Field aboard their NASA T-38 jets at about 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT), KSC officials said.

Accompanying Jett to KSC will be STS-115 pilot Chris Ferguson and mission specialists Joe Tanner, Dan Burbank, Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Steve MacLean.

The astronauts will haul a new set of solar panels and two additional pieces of the 11-segment truss structure for the International Space Station (ISS). The 11-day spaceflight is set to launch no earlier than Aug. 27 with a flight window that extends through Sept. 13.

NASA officials, however, hope to launch Atlantis before Sept. 7 to allow a Russian Soyuz spacecraft – carrying the ISS Expedition 14 crew and space tourist Daisuke Enomoto – to rocket toward the station one week later.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 8:58 am and is filed under Space & Astronomy, Strange News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.