Atlantis is set to leave the International Space Station on Tuesday and land at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Thursday, NASA said.
HOUSTON: Indian-American Astronaut Sunita Williams, who set a new world record for the longest uninterrupted space flight by a woman, will return home this coming week 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 on Tuesday and land at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Thursday, NASA said, although 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 damaged heat shield was cleared after Mission Specialist Danny Olivas repaired a protruding thermal blanket on one of Atlantis' orbital manoeuvring system pods during a spacewalk.
The astronauts recieved the good news yesterday while they were transferring cargo between Atlantis and the ISS, capping a wonderful day for Williams, who earlier broke the world record in space flight by a woman, surpassing the 188-day, four-hour mark set by astronaut Shannon Lucid way back in 1996.
"It's just that I'm in the right place at the right time," Williams said on being congratulated by the MissionControl.
"It's just an honour to be up here. Even when the station has little problems, it's just a beautiful, wonderful place tolive," she said.
Earlier this year, Williams broke the record for most spacewalk time by a woman by logging 29 hours and 17 minutes in four space walks. The previous record was held by Kathryn Thornton.
In April, she also became the first astronaut to run a marathon in orbit. NASA said efforts to bring the Russian navigation computers back to full operation will continue.
Yesterday, Russian flight controllers and the station crew were able to power-up two lanes of the Russian central computer and two lanes of the terminal computer by using a jumper cable to bypass a faulty secondary power switch.
"Flight controllers began sending commands overnight to restart some systems. The central computer is now communicating with the US command and control computer, and the terminal computer is communicating with US navigationcomputers," the space agency said.
NASA officials said the crew was never in danger of running out of oxygen, power or essentials.
The computer glitch had added to the NASA's concerns about the space shuttle's heat shield. NASA has been sensitive about the space shuttles' heat shields ever since the Columbia accident killed sevenastronauts in 2003.
A piece of insulating foam from the shuttle's external tank came loose during launch, striking Columbia's wing and allowing fiery gases to penetrate it during re-entry.
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