近年英超积分榜:shuttle photo op

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL--Outgoing Expedition 27 commander Dmitry Kondratyev, Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli and Catherine "Cady" Coleman packed up their Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft Monday and prepared for undocking and landing in Kazakhstan to close out five-and-a-half-month stay in space.

In a dramatic break with normal practice, Kondratyev plans to halt the Soyuz departure at a distance between 590 and 650 feet directly behind the lab complex for an out-of-this-world photo opportunity, allowing Nespoli to shoot video and snap still photos of the International Space Station with the shuttle Endeavour attached, a long-sought family portrait expected to become one of the signature images of the shuttle-station era.

With the shuttle program slated for retirement after one more flight in July, Monday's photo op comes at almost the last possible minute, the first and only time a shuttle and the station have appeared in the same field of view from a remote vantage point.

Kondratyev, Nespoli and Coleman plan to board the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft and seal the hatch around 2:21 p.m. EDT (GMT-4). Undocking from the Russian Rassvet mini-research module is expected at 5:35 p.m., about an hour-and-a-half earlier than originally planned to provide time for the photo survey. Landing in Kazakhstan remains targeted for 10:26 p.m., 159 days, seven hours and 17 minutes after launch Dec. 15.

Undocking will occur during the Endeavour crew's sleep period and it's not yet known whether commander Mark Kelly and his crewmates will be up for the departure.

"There's no requirement for them to be awake," said space station Flight Director Derek Hassmann. "They don't play a role at all in the undock. All the Soyuz undock activities are controlled by Moscow."

But flight controllers sent the shuttle crew a message earlier with tips on which windows would have the best view of the departing Soyuz in case anyone wanted to stay up late or get up early.

"We're leaving it up to their discretion," Hassmann said. "If I had to guess, if it was me in that position, I'd be awake for a couple of hours."

Nespoli planned to "shoot" the space station through a porthole in the Soyuz TMA-20 habitation module starting about 15 minutes after undocking. Five minutes after that, at 5:55 p.m., Expedition 28 commander Andrey Borisenko will oversee space station rocket firings to kick off a 15-minute, 129-degree turn, presenting a side-on view to the Soyuz with the shuttle in profile on the left and the Russian segment of the lab on the right.

In all, Nespoli will have about 25 minutes to complete his work before Kondratyev fires the Soyuz TMA-20's thrusters to depart the area, keeping the ship on track for re-entry and landing.

The normal practice for a Soyuz undocking calls for all three crew members, wearing Russian pressure suits, to be strapped into their seats in the spacecraft's central descent module. The forward habitation module and the aft propulsion section are jettisoned just before re-entry to burn up in the atmosphere. As such, the hatch between the descent module and habitation module is closed and leak tested before undocking.

For the photo shoot, the hatch will be closed for undocking as usual, but re-opened a few minutes later so Nespoli can use the porthole in the forward compartment. A few minutes after a separation "burn," he'll remove digital photo cards from his cameras and make his way back into the cramped descent module, taking the seat to Kondratyev's left. The hatch then will be sealed and leak tests carried out to verify the integrity of the central command module. Nespoli will don his pressure suit gloves and carry out additional leak tests.

If all goes well, Kondratyev will oversee a four-minute 25 second deorbit rocket firing starting at 9:36:14 p.m., slowing the spacecraft by about 258 mph and dropping the far side of its orbit into the atmosphere. The three modules making up the Soyuz TMA-20 vehicle will separate at 10:01 p.m. and the descent module with the returning station fliers will slam into the atmosphere at an altitude of about 62 miles at 10:03 p.m.

The re-entry trajectory was designed to set up a landing near Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 10:26 p.m. Russian recovery forces were staged nearby to assist the returning station crew, along with U.S. and Russian flight surgeons. Additional recovery crews were stationed farther back along the trajectory in case of any problems that might result in a steeper-than-normal "ballistic" re-entry.

After initial medical checks, Kondratyev, Nespoli and Coleman will fly by helicopter to Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Coleman and Nespoli will board a NASA jet for a flight back to Houston while Kondratyev heads for Star City near Moscow.

The departure imagery shot by Nespoli will be copied and sent on to Moscow and Houston for release. It is not yet clear when it will be available in the United States, but NASA managers hope to have it "in house" by Tuesday night.

"This is the first time we've ever done something like this where we have a Soyuz undocking during a shuttle mission," said Hassmann. "There are a number of challenges associated with doing that. There were engineering challenges in terms of the analysis we needed to do to make sure it was safe for the Soyuz to undock relative to loading on the solar arrays and other constraints."

Another complicating factor was an offset sleep schedule that had the Endeavour astronauts, plus Expedition 28 flight engineer Ronald Garan, following one sleep cycle while the departing Expedition 27 crew, along with Borisenko and flight engineer Alexander Samokutyaev, going to bed several hours later.

"On a station docked mission, this is the first time we've had offset sleep schedules and it's been a little bit of a challenge to manage the communication loops to the crew," Hassmann said. "But we're getting better at that as the days go by, so I'm really happy the way this has worked out."

Barring a mission extension, Endeavour is scheduled to undock May 29 for a landing back at the Kennedy Space Center on June 1. Borisenko, Samokutyaev and Garan will have the space station to themselves until June 9 when three fresh crew members -- Soyuz TMA-02M commander Sergei Volkov, Michael Fossum and Satoshi Furukawa -- are scheduled to arrive following launch June 7 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.