Final Flight, Nextgen Explorers, And Exciting Forcast on This Week @ Nasa

This Week at NASA… Carrying a six-astronaut crew -- STS-132 Commander Ken Ham, Pilot Tony Antonelli and Mission Specialists Garrett Reisman, Steve Bowen, Mike Good and Piers Sellers - space shuttle Atlantis concluded its final flight, a 12-day trip to the International Space Station, with a smooth landing at the Kennedy Space Center. “And Houston Atlantis we have wheel stop! Copy Houston wheel stop Atlantis. Sock that landing was something your air force crewmates would be proud of that was pretty sweet” STS-132 delivered to the ISS the Russian Rassvet, or “dawn,” Mini-Research Module- 1, only the second Russian module ever to be carried into space by a shuttle. With their delivery of Rassvet, the STS-132 crew continued the space station’s transition from assembly phase to its exclusive role as the world’s only scientific research laboratory in microgravity. “Ignition and liftoff of Atlantis a new orbiter just joins the shuttle fleet and it has cleared the tower.” Atlantis, OV-104, was delivered to Kennedy Space Center in April 1985. It lifted off on its maiden voyage on Oct. 3, 1985, on mission 51-J, the second dedicated Department of Defense flight. Later missions included the launch of the Galileo interplanetary probe to Jupiter on STS-34 in October 1989, and STS-37, with the Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO) as its primary payload, in April 1991. Atlantis has visited the International Space Station eleven times, delivering hardware that has included the United States’ Destiny Laboratory and Europe’s Columbus module. Among many other milestones during its 120 million miles of flight is Atlantis’ distinction as the first shuttle to dock to the Russian Space Station Mir in June 1995. And in May of last year, Atlantis flew the STS-125 crew to the Hubble Space Telescope where they brought new life to the observatory. Atlantis is named after a two-masted sailing ship that was operated for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute from 1930 to 1966. Students from community colleges in 28 states and Puerto Rico had an out-of-this- world experience at the Johnson Space Center. As the guests of NASA, seventy-six participants teamed up in fictitious companies to design and develop robotic space rovers for the exploration of alien worlds. Each team created a prototype rover, a line drawing of their vehicle, and a company infrastructure. “I would like to work on programming the robotics and rovers and all that stuff, you know, I want to be that person that was on the team making that program that the robot used to come to Mars.” To qualify for their expenses-paid sojourn to Houston, the students successfully completed Web-based assignments and maintained a classroom average of 95 during the school year. Their visit culminated the National Community College Aerospace Scholars program. The pilot project encourages students to enter careers in science, technology, engineering and math. A new, advanced instrument designed to shed more light on the mysteries of the sun was prepared for shipment to its launch site. SUMI, the Solar Ultraviolet Magnetograph Investigation, is targeted to liftoff on a sounding rocket from White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico on June 8. Built by solar physicists and engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center, SUMI will travel to an altitude between 120 and 190 miles. From there, it will act like polarized sunglasses and gauge the strength and direction of magnetic fields between the sun’s surface, or photosphere, and its corona, the extended outer atmosphere, a region impossible to see from Earth. Scientists hope data captured during by SUMI can help determine how energy is transferred between different regions of the sun. “At this point time I want I want to introduce Alan Poindexter and he’ll introduce the rest of the crew." Space shuttle Discovery's STS-131 crew members were heartily welcomed to Headquarters by its employees. Mission Commander Alan Poindexter, a Washington area native from Rockville, Md., was assisted by five 131 crewmates in presenting highlights of their April journey to the International Space Station. “Discover out at launch pad 39 an early morning…” Jim Dutton was Discovery’s pilot. Veteran flyers and Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio, Stephanie Wilson and Clay Anderson were joined by Dottie Metcalf- Lindenburger, the last of three teachers selected as educator astronauts to fly on the shuttle Discovery traveled more than 6.2 million miles over 15 days to deliver science racks, new crew sleeping quarters, and other equipment and supplies to the ISS. The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, has conducted its "First Light" mission, producing this composite infrared image of Jupiter. A recent visual-wavelength picture of approximately the same side of Jupiter is shown for comparison. The white stripe in the infrared image is a region of relatively transparent clouds through which the warm interior of Jupiter can be seen.Recording the observatory’s initial imagery was the recently-installed Faint Object Infrared Camera, or FORCAST. FORCAST will be used to study celestial objects such as planets and star- forming regions. It’s one of the first instruments designed for the telescope and will provide SOFIA with the highest spatial resolutions of protostellar environments: young star clusters, molecular clouds, and galaxies. Eleven years ago, space shuttle Discovery became the first orbiter to dock to the International Space Station on STS-96. “Its coming down during the last part of the rendezvous, and really just moments before the first ever docking with the International Space Station.” The Spacehab module and additional cargo was delivered to the station by Discovery and its crew of seven -- Commander Kent Rominger, Mission Specialists Tamara Jernigan, Ellen Ochoa, Daniel Barry, Julie Payette and Valery Tokarev and Pilot Rick Husband, who was among the seven astronauts lost with space shuttle Columbia on STS-107 less than three years later. And that’s This Week at NASA! For more on these and other stories, log on to: www.nasa.gov