Atlantis crew prepares to depart space station, head back to Earth

In this televised view from the Zvezda module Saturday, cosmonaut Boris Morukov, bottom left, astronaut Edward Lu, right, and pilot Scott Altman take a break while installing a treadmill

By Brad Liston

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) -- Astronauts from the space shuttle Atlantis closed the last hatch on the International Space Station on Sunday and prepared to depart, leaving behind an orbital construction site now ready for its long-stay crew.

The astronauts had spent more than five days aboard the 13-story station, making a new module with crew quarters both livable and functional.

Rotating crews of three U.S. and Russian astronauts are to begin taking up residence on the station in November. They will live aboard the Russian Zvezda module, added to the station in July.

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The Atlantis crew installed such household necessities as a toilet, exercise equipment, a food warmer and medicine cabinet. On the technical side, they repaired the station's power system, installed oxygen generators and hooked up two-way video conferencing.

"We've been calling the ground asking for extra things to do," said Atlantis pilot Scott Altman. "As a team, we've been able to get everything done that we set out to do."

Early Monday morning, after the crew has finished sleeping, Atlantis will depart the station, slowly flying around it twice so ground controllers can make a visual inspection, then slowly leaving it behind.

As smoothly as operations have gone in space, Hurricane Gordon has made the situation on the ground more complicated.

The Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral was under a stage three hurricane alert Sunday. Although the storm was expected to pass north of the space center, the facility was being secured "as a precaution," said NASA spokesman George Diller.

Launch officials decided to leave space shuttle Discovery on the launch pad rather than roll it back to the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building, a move that would almost certainly delay Discovery's October 5 launch.

Shuttle facilities at the space center were being boarded, shuttered and sandbagged in case the hurricane should change its direction.

Discovery is bound for the space station as well, but its job will be to deliver the Z-1 truss, the centerpiece for future expansion of the orbiting outpost, a joint endeavor between the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada.

The highlight of that mission will be four complex spacewalks to secure the truss to the existing station.

Atlantis is scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday but current weather conditions would prohibit that. If the weather does not improve, Atlantis carries enough reserve fuel for an extra two days in orbit.

NASA also has the option of landing shuttles in California. Florida, though, is the preferred site because of the time and expense involved in flying a shuttle from California to Florida atop a jumbo jet.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Human Space Flight (HSF) - International Space Station
Boeing's International Space Station page
Shuttle Orbiter Atlantis (OV-104)
Zarya: The Control Module
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