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www.southgatearc.org
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This time, it's for real!Just two weeks after completing their countdown dress rehearsal, the STS-115 astronauts will arrive once again at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida - but this time, the countdown will be real. Scheduled for liftoff at 4:30 p.m. EDT on Aug. 27, the crew members of Atlantis will begin the last three days of preflight activities on Thursday morning when they land at the Shuttle Landing Facility in T-38 jets. The STS-115 crew consists of Commander Brent W. Jett Jr., Pilot Christopher J. Ferguson and Mission Specialists Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper, KD5TVR, Joseph R. Tanner, Daniel C. Burbank, KC5ZSX and Steven G. MacLean, who represents the Canadian Space Agency. With this mission, NASA is ready to get back to building the International Space Station, marking the first time in almost four years that a space station component has been added to the orbiting outpost. That also means the shuttle program is coming up on some of the most challenging space missions ever. During their three spacewalks, crew members of Atlantis will install the P3/P4 integrated truss and a second set of solar arrays on the space station, doubling the station’s current ability to generate power from sunlight and adding 17.5 tons to its mass. Last weekend at Launch Pad 39B, workers completed the difficult task
of replacing bolts holding Atlantis' main communications antenna in place.
The repair job required building a special platform so the workers could
reach the top of the space shuttle's 60-foot-long payload bay. This enabled
technicians to successfully remove two shorter bolts holding the antenna
in place and install longer ones. Shuttle managers decided on Friday to
change out the bolts as a precaution. Learn more about the bolt replacement
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