Post Landing
Following standard post-landing processing at Edwards Air Force Base, Atlantis was lifted into the air using the Mate-DeMate device, and attached to the top of a modified Boeing 747, called a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) for its return flight to Florida. After departing California on 1 June, the flight made an overnight stop at Biggs Army Airfield in El Paso, Texas, and on 2 June made stops in San Antonio, Texas, and Columbus, Mississippi to refuel. After performing a flyby of the coast, the SCA landed at Kennedy Space Center at 6:53 p.m EDT on 2 June 2009. One of the heavier return flights, Atlantis was still carrying the cargo from the mission in the payload bay, and weighed approximately one quarter of a million pounds. Combined with the 747, the total weight of the vehicle was approximately six hundred thousand pounds. Atlantis was removed from the SCA and towed to the Orbiter Processing Facility late 2 June.
Read more about this topic: STS-125
Famous quotes containing the words post and/or landing:
“To the old saying that man built the house but woman made of it a “home” might be added the modern supplement that woman accepted cooking as a chore but man has made of it a recreation.”
—Emily Post (1873–1960)
“I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)