The astronauts are now beginning more than a week of activity that will also include three spacewalks to store large spare parts outside the space station
Tonight (20:28 Wednesday Israel time) the transition between the shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-129 and the International Space Station opened. Thus, the end of the stay on the space station for Nicole Stott, the flight engineer on the 20th and 21st crews of the space station, begins to approach, after 80 days in which she stayed on the station.
Along with her fellow STS-129 crew members, Stott will spend a combined 91 days in space if Atlantis lands as planned on November 27. She will be the last crew member to return to Earth aboard a space shuttle. From now on, Soyuz spacecraft will be used to lift crew members and return them to Earth.
For the rest of our night, the crew members plan to remove the logistics module from the cargo deck of Atlantis and transfer it from the shuttle's robotic arm to the station's in preparation for attaching it to one of the station's air shafts so that the hatches to it can be opened and the cargo can be unloaded from it.
The shuttle brought two facilities to the station that together contain over nine tons of spare parts that are too large to be launched into space by any other means of launch. Among other things, three spacewalks are planned in the mission, the purpose of which is to store some of this equipment in warehouses outside the station so as not to reduce the space intended for astronauts and for equipment and food that must be found in a compressed environment.
