NASA - Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-117 Docks With the ISS

Video is edited to condense the docking process.

Space Shuttle Atlantis and the STS-117 crew arrived at the International Space Station at 3:36 p.m. EDT, delivering a new truss segment and crew member to the orbital outpost.

The STS-117 astronauts and the station's Expedition 15 crew will conduct pressure and leak checks before the hatches between the spacecraft open. After the crews greet each other, they will quickly begin joint operations.

One of the first major tasks is the station crew rotation. STS-117 Mission Specialist Clayton Anderson will switch places with Expedition 15 Flight Engineer Suni Williams, who will be wrapping up a six-month tour of duty on the station. Anderson is scheduled to stay on the station until he returns to Earth with STS-120 later this year.

Anderson will officially become a member of Expedition 15 when his custom-made seat liner is swapped out with Williams' in the Soyuz spacecraft docked to the station.

The crews will prepare for Monday's installation of the Starboard 3 and 4 (S3/S4) truss segment and the first of three scheduled STS-117 spacewalks. The crews will use the shuttle robotic arm to lift the S3/S4 out of Atlantis' payload bay and hand it off to the station arm.

The S3/S4, which contains a new set of solar arrays, is scheduled to be attached to the station at 11:08 a.m. Monday. Then, STS-117 Mission Specialists John "Danny" Olivas and Jim Reilly will make connections between the station and the new truss segment during the spacewalk, which is set to kick off at 2:53 p.m.

About an hour before docking, Sturckow and Archambault guided the shuttle through a back-flip maneuver that allowed the Expedition 15 crew to photograph the shuttle's protective heat-resistant tiles. The imagery will be sent to engineers on Earth for analysis.

STS-117 is the 21st shuttle mission to visit the station. Atlantis scheduled to undock June 17 and return to Earth on the 19th.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• NASA
• Space
• Shuttle
• Atlantis
• STS-117
• ISS
• science
• spacecraft

[TitanSound]

For some reason the woman narrating has a very relaxing voice.....

[lorelu]

Nice video!

[Kendrick1961]

Now "That's" parallel parking. 

[mikkitiny]

really puzzling why?

[itzamejason]

All the NASA announcers have calm, and relaxing voices, even the sts crews.

[marleyinoc]

Why do they have to kick off the spacewalk at 2:53pm - they can't just do it at 3pm? It'd be easier to remember too.

[sangiorgese]

very cool!

[caisty]

Great Video, nicely edited and good information

[blueGoa]

Cool!