The Hindu : Front Page : Sunita set to return on Thursday; re-entry cleared

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Monday, Jun 18, 2007
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Sunita set to return on Thursday; re-entry cleared

— Photo: AP

UP ABOVE THE WORLD: In this image from NASA TV the crew from the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station hold a joint news conference on Saturday. Front row space station flight engineer Clayton Anderson, commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, flight engineers Sunita Williams and Oleg Kotov.

HOUSTON: Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams, who set a world record for the longest uninterrupted space flight by a woman, will return home thisweek after NASA cleared space shuttle Atlantis' thermal protection system for re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

Atlantis is set to leave the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday and land at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Thursday, NASA said. However, mission managers may delay the departure by a day to buy more time for engineers to figure out why the computer system on the Russian side of the station crashed. The shuttle's heat shield, damaged during lift-off on Friday, was cleared after Mission Specialist Danny Olivas repaired a protruding thermal blanket on one of Atlantis' orbital manoeuvring system pods during spacewalk.

Cargo transfer

The astronauts received the news on Saturday while they were transferring cargo from Atlantis to the ISS.

Ms. Williams said at a press conference from space that spaceflight could not be taken for granted and it was still pretty dangerous.

"Not friendly"

``We are living in an environment that is not really friendly for humans. ... (The space station is) not just a tourist vacation place. It's a serious place and we are doing serious business and serious science up here,'' said the 41-year-old, who began her space journey on December 10. — PTI

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