Astronauts Complete Space Station Addition Atlantis to Begin Return to Earth Today

AP | September 15 2006

With their hardest tasks behind them, space shuttle Atlantis's six astronauts got time to relax Saturday after almost a week of nonstop work adding a 17 1/2 -ton addition with winglike solar power panels to the international space station.

NASA even let the crew sleep an extra hour before waking them with Jimmy Buffett's beach song "Twelve Volt Man."

"We said good morning to them, then a little housekeeping and then left them alone, gave them a chance to enjoy their time on orbit and wind down from what has been a very, very busy series of days on the flight," said flight director Paul Dye.

The astronauts were grateful and echoed Dye's description.

"We've been very, very busy so the chance to sleep in was very much appreciated," rookie astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper said during a news conference from space.

Saturday was the last full day at the space station for Atlantis's crew. Besides relaxing and enjoying the view from some 210 miles above Earth, they still had to unload supplies for the space station, including 90 pounds of oxygen.

The Atlantis astronauts were to say their goodbyes to the space station's three crew members and undock early Sunday. Once undocked, the crew planned to fly around the space station to get the first complete view of the orbiting space lab in several years.

The Atlantis crew delivered the addition to the space station and, during three spacewalks, hooked up the new segment and prepared it so the 240-foot solar energy arrays could be opened. The solar arrays will provide a quarter of the space station's electricity when it is finished in 2010.

It was the first shuttle mission devoted to space station construction since December 2002. The Columbia accident in early 2003 halted all construction while NASA worked to fix problems with the shuttles' external fuel tanks.

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