TCEP Space

Shuttle Mission STS-111 Landed 19 June 2002

The space shuttle Endeavour was due to fire its engines, to take it out of orbit and return to earth, on Monday 17 June, to land at the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. However, the probability of thunderstorms in the area resulted in postponement of any attempt at landing until first Tuesday and then Wednesday.

Endeavour's engines were fired at 1650 Greenwich Mean Time on Wednesday 19 June, to decelerate the spacecraft and commence re-entry through the earth's atmosphere. The space shuttle landed at 1758 GMT at the back-up landing site of Edwards Airforce Base, California, due to continuing poor weather conditions over the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida.

The total distance flown by Endeavour on this mission since taking-off on 5 June, was 5,781,115 statute miles and was covered in 13 days, 20 hours, 34 minutes and 52 seconds.

The shuttle undocked from the International Space Station at 1432 GMT on Saturday, over western Kazakhstan near the Baikonur cosmodrome.

On Friday 14 June, Endeavour's steering jets were fired to raise the altitude of the space station by an additional four miles. This was the third altitude boost of this mission, raising the total additional orbit height to six miles. The Leonardo logistics container module was also transferred from the space station to Endeavour's cargo bay using the robot arm, in preparation for undocking.

The third space walk completed on Thursday 13 June by astronauts Philippe Perrin and Franklin Chang-Diaz, to replace a faulty wrist roll joint on the space station's robot arm, was the forty-first spacewalk carried out to date to assemble and maintain the International Space Station. Astronauts during this mission have now spent a total of nineteen hours and thirty-one minutes during the three spacewalks.

Docking with the International Space Station occurred at 1625 GMT on Friday 7 June. The relative approach speed of the space shuttle for docking was one inch per second, whilst the International Space Station was travelling at almost five miles per second!

The Canadarm2 robot arm and the Mobile Base System to which it will later be attached, are part of Canada's contribution to the International Space Station. When completed after subsequent space missions, the robot arm will be able to travel along the entire length of the ultimately three hundred and sixty foot long first space railway. The Mobile Transporter will enable Canadarm2 to service all of the Space Station.

The Leonardo logistics container module was built in Italy. It is one of three container modules built to service the space station.

The two spacecraft orbited the earth every ninety minutes, at an altitude of two hundred and forty statute miles.

With acknowledgement to NASA for source material.

Copyright Richard West.  Page updated 23 October 2011.