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This story was updated at 7:53 a.m. EDT.
Astronauts on the space shuttle Atlantis packed up their spacecraft Saturday to get ready for their trip home and will get some well-deserved time off after a busy week of space station construction.
The six-man Atlantis crew has spent the last week at the International Space Station, where they added a new Russian room packed with supplies, fresh solar array batteries and a spare communications antenna.
They wrapped up their third and last spacewalk on Friday. So Mission Control planned to give the spaceflyers a few hours off today to rest up.
"I think we won't need to encourage them to rest up and it's about time," station flight director Emily Nelson said. Atlantis is due to undock from the space station Sunday and land in Florida on Wednesday morning.
During their 12-day mission, Atlantis astronauts installed the $200 million Russian research module Rassvet ("Dawn" in Russian), a new room that can also serve as a docking port for Russian spacecraft.
The Rassvet module is packed with a ton of U.S. supplies, but the station's own six-person crew won't be unload it until some metal shavings floating around inside are swept up by its air filters. Until the air is clear, the door to the station's new room will stay closed.
Astronauts on the space shuttle Atlantis packed up their spacecraft Saturday to get ready for their trip home and will get some well-deserved time off after a busy week of space station construction.
The six-man Atlantis crew has spent the last week at the International Space Station, where they added a new Russian room packed with supplies, fresh solar array batteries and a spare communications antenna.
They wrapped up their third and last spacewalk on Friday. So Mission Control planned to give the spaceflyers a few hours off today to rest up.
"I think we won't need to encourage them to rest up and it's about time," station flight director Emily Nelson said. Atlantis is due to undock from the space station Sunday and land in Florida on Wednesday morning.
During their 12-day mission, Atlantis astronauts installed the $200 million Russian research module Rassvet ("Dawn" in Russian), a new room that can also serve as a docking port for Russian spacecraft.
The Rassvet module is packed with a ton of U.S. supplies, but the station's own six-person crew won't be unload it until some metal shavings floating around inside are swept up by its air filters. Until the air is clear, the door to the station's new room will stay closed.
