Space shuttle Atlantis gets ready for final flight on July 8

Nasa space shuttle Atlantis is getting ready for its targeted July 8 launch to the International Space Station, which will end the 30-year space shuttle programme. The shuttle is expected to launch on July 8 at 11.26 a.m. EDT.

The trip will last for 12 days, during which 8,000 pounds of spare parts will be delivered to the International Space Station. The shuttle will also test whether it is possible to robotically refuel existing orbiting satellites.

The crew members for the STS-135 mission are: Commander Christopher Ferguson, pilot Douglas Hurley and mission specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim.

The four astronauts have been undergoing pre-launch training at Launch Pad 39A of Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. “They practiced emergency escape procedures and inspected the payloads inside Atlantis’ cargo bay. Later they received operations and payload briefings inside Kennedy’s Launch Control Centre,” according to Nasa.

The Space Shuttle Programme held its programme-level Flight Readiness Review at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston.

Technicians at the pad have completed their high-tech X-ray scans of the Atlantis’ external fuel tank stringer support beams. The technicians will be scanning the bottoms of the shuttle’s 21-foot long beams.

Apart from the spare parts to be carried to International Space Station, the shuttle will transport two Apple Inc.’s iPhone 4 to the US National Laboratory. The iPhones will probably make their journey home on a Russian Soyuz vehicle in the fall of 2011.

Odyssey Space Research said it has planted a custom-made iOS app, called SpaceLab for iOS, on the iPhones to conduct four experiments that are Limb Tracker, Sensor Cal, State Acq and LFI.

The app, which replicates the experience and tasks affected by the crew members on the app.

Limb Tracker is a navigation experiment which “will involve taking photographs of earth and matching an arc to the horizon through manipulation of an overlay”.

The experiment will result in “an estimate of altitude and ‘off axis’ angle, a measurement of the angle of the image with respect to the earth’s centre”.