[sarex] STS-115 MCC Status Report #16

[Arthur Rowe]

SUBMITTED BY ARTHUR N1ORC - AMSAT A/C #31468

NASA NEWS

2 a.m. CDT Sunday, Sept. 17, 2006
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

	09.17.06
STATUS REPORT: STS-115-16

STS-115 MCC Status Report #16

It's undocking day. The Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to begin 
moving away from the International Space Station at 7:50 a.m. CDT.

Crew members will get a look at the results of their STS-115 mission, 
which resumed assembly of the station. They'll do a full fly-around, the 
first in four years, to photograph the station with its new truss 
segments and solar arrays.

Before undocking, the STS-115 crew -- Commander Brent Jett, Pilot Chris 
Ferguson and Mission Specialists Dan Burbank, Joe Tanner, Heide 
Stefanyshyn-Piper and Steve MacLean -- will say farewell to Expedition 
13 -- Commander Pavel Vinogradov, and Flight Engineers Jeff Williams and 
Thomas Reiter -- about 5 a.m. before closing the hatches between the two 
vehicles.

Then, with Ferguson at the controls, Atlantis will slowly move away from 
the station. The fly-around is scheduled to start at about 8:15 a.m. 
Atlantis is to leave the area a little after 9:30 a.m.

Meanwhile, on the ground, preparations are under way for the launch of 
the next inhabitants of the station. The Expedition 14 crew, Commander 
Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin, and 
spaceflight participant Anousheh Ansari, are scheduled to launch in 
their Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan 
at 11:09 p.m. CDT. They are scheduled to dock with the orbital 
laboratory two days later. NASA TV coverage of the Expedition 14 
pre-launch activities and launch begins at 10:30 p.m.

The shuttle and station crews woke at 11:15 p.m. to "Danger Zone" by 
Kenny Loggins, played for Ferguson. In his reply, Ferguson thanked 
soon-to-retire STS-115 lead guidance, navigation and control flight 
controller Charles Alford for his 40 years of NASA service. The shuttle 
pilot also thanked all those in Mission Control for helping to make 
spaceflight possible.

The next STS-115 mission status report will be issued Sunday afternoon, 
or earlier if events warrant.