Atlantis Crew Completes Work Before Packing for Trip Home

Atlantis’ astronauts, silent to the world because of their military mission, put in a final day of work in orbit Friday on their hush-hush assignments before preparing for their landing.

NASA said that Atlantis is scheduled to land Sunday at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and a spokesman said this means that the five-member, all-military crew probably will spend most of today packing up for the return to Earth.

The primary goal of the 34th shuttle mission was accomplished earlier, sources said, with the successful deployment of what is believed to be an advanced 19-ton photoreconnaissance satellite built to spy on the Soviet Union.

No information was released about the crew’s activities in orbit, but Jeff Carr, a spokesman at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said that, if the Atlantis crew follows shuttle mission routine, then Friday was the final full day to complete its secret activities.

Typically, the day before landing “is a day to clean up and start cabin stowage,” Carr said. He said astronauts usually must spend their prereturn day in orbit dismantling and putting away equipment used during the mission.

Carr said that today the astronauts must also test-fire the reaction control jets and check other critical systems that Atlantis will need during its fiery plunge through Earth’s atmosphere.

Meanwhile, workers started inspections of the solid rocket boosters that were used to put Atlantis in orbit. The spent boosters were recovered from the sea, where they fell after the launching, and were towed to the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The boosters will be disassembled and refurbished for later use.

NASA spokeswoman Lisa Malone said that a preliminary inspection of the rockets did not uncover any abnormalities.

It was a failed solid rocket booster that caused the January, 1986, shuttle Challenger accident that killed seven crew members.

The silence from Atlantis on Friday was good news, NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham said. As long as there is no announcement from Mission Control, he said, “We can safely assume there are no problems.”

A Pentagon-imposed blackout on mission details is to be broken sometime today for an official NASA announcement of the precise landing time.