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- On Friday, July 7, 1995, 6:30 a.m. CDT, STS-71 MCC Status Report # 20 reports:
- The crew on board Atlantis is preparing to end its historic mission with a 9:55 a.m. central time landing today at the Kennedy Space Center.
- With weather conditions in Florida expected to be acceptable at landing time, Commander Hoot Gibson transitioned to the deorbit activities timeline shortly before 5 a.m. central with work to configure the crew cabin for reentry well under way.
- On board, the crew members have closed and secured the airlock connecting the crew compartment to the orbiter docking mechanism and Spacelab module housed in Atlantis' payload bay. Deactivation of the Spacelab module is complete, as is installation of seats on the flight deck that will be occupied by Mission Specialists Ellen Baker and Greg Harbaugh on reentry.
- There are two opportunities for a landing at KSC this morning. The first opportunity begins with a deorbit burn at 8:45 a.m., with Atlantis touching down at 9:55 a.m. The second opportunity comes one orbit later with a 10:22 a.m. engine firing resulting in an 11:31 a.m. landing.
- The eight astronauts and cosmonauts began what should be their final day on orbit at 1:32 a.m. with a wake-up call from Mission Control. In recognition of their journey -- which began March 14 in Kazakhastan, the crew awakened this morning to Supertramp's "Take the Long Way Home."
- On Friday, July 7, 1995, 3:30 p.m. CDT, STS-71 MCC Status Report # 21 reports:
- Commander "Hoot" Gibson and Pilot Charlie Precourt guided Atlantis to a smooth touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center.at 9:55 AM Central time this morning to wrap up the first mission to linkup a Shuttle with the Russian Space Station Mir.
- After firing Atlantis' braking rockets at 8:45 AM, Gibson and Precourt brought Atlantis home to runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center.s Shuttle Landing Facility to complete the 4.1 million mile mission, the first of seven planned docking flights to the Mir as part of the Phase One program leading to the development and construction of the International Space Station.
- About an hour after landing, Mir 18 cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov, Gennady Strekalov and U.S. astronaut Norm Thagard were brought out of the Shuttle into the Crew Transport Vehicle alongside Atlantis for their ride to the Operations and Checkout Building at KSC for initial postflight medical testing. The Mir 18 crewmembers spent 115 days in space following their launch on a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on March 14th.
- Dezhurov, Strekalov and Thagard will be flown back to Ellington Field in Houston in an Air Force C-9 Medevac plane for several weeks of medical tests and reorientation to a gravity environment after almost four months of weightlessness. They are expected to arrive in Houston about 9 1/2 hours after landing. The rest of the STS-71 crew is scheduled to Houston around 9 PM.
- Atlantis was towed this afternoon to the Orbiter Processing Facility at KSC to begin a maintenance period leading to its next launch in late October on STS-74, the second Shuttle-Mir docking mission, in which a Russian-built Docking Module will be permanently mated to the Kristall science module's docking mechanism on the Mir. That will enable Atlantis to linkup to Mir on future flights with enough clearance to avoid interference with the Russian Space Station's solar arrays.
- Disassembly of the RSRM factory joint after landing (and after the launch of STS-70) identified that the solid rocket boster (SRB) motor factory joint experienced a minor o-ring problem causing some discoloration of the o-rings due to hot gasses. The problem warrents further investigation.
Return to STS-71 Mission Summary - On Friday, July 7, 1995, 6:30 a.m. CDT, STS-71 MCC Status Report # 20 reports: