Names | Space Transportation System-112 |
---|---|
Mission type | ISS assembly |
Operator | NASA |
COSPAR ID | 2002-047A |
SATCAT no. | 27537 |
Mission duration | 10 days, 19 hours, 58 minutes, 44 seconds |
Distance travelled | 7,200,000 kilometres (4,500,000 mi) |
Orbits completed | 170 |
Spacecraft properties | |
Spacecraft | Space Shuttle Atlantis |
Launch mass | 116,538 kilograms (256,922 lb) |
Landing mass | 91,390 kilograms (201,480 lb) |
Payload mass | 12,572 kilograms (27,717 lb) |
Crew | |
Crew size | 6 |
Members | |
Start of mission | |
Launch date | 7 October 2002, 19:45:51 | UTC
Launch site | Kennedy, LC-39B |
End of mission | |
Landing date | 18 October 2002, 15:44:35 | UTC
Landing site | Kennedy, SLF Runway 33 |
Orbital parameters | |
Reference system | Geocentric |
Regime | Low Earth |
Perigee altitude | 273 kilometres (170 mi) |
Apogee altitude | 405 kilometres (252 mi) |
Inclination | 51.6 degrees |
Period | 91.2 minutes |
Docking with ISS | |
Docking port | PMA-2 (Destiny forward) |
Docking date | 9 October 2002, 15:16 UTC |
Undocking date | 16 October 2002, 13:13 UTC |
Time docked | 6 days, 21 hours, 57 minutes |
(L-R): Sandra H. Magnus, David A. Wolf, Pamela A. Melroy, Jeffrey S. Ashby, Piers J. Sellers and Fyodor Yurchikhin |
STS-112 (ISS assembly flight 9A) was an 11-day Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by Space Shuttle Atlantis.[1] Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched on 7 October 2002 at 19:45 UTC from the Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39B to deliver the 28,000 pound Starboard 1 (S1) truss segment to the Space Station.[2] Ending a 4.5-million-mile journey, Atlantis landed at 15:44 UTC on 18 October 2002 on runway 33 at the Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility.
During the launch, the ET bipod ramp shed a chunk of foam that caused a dent ~4" wide and 3" deep into the metal SRB-ET Attach Ring near the bottom of the left Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster.[3] Prior to the next mission (STS-113), an upper-level decision was made at NASA to continue with launches as scheduled. The launch subsequent to that was the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the ill-fated STS-107.[4]
Space Shuttle Atlantis had been scheduled to visit the International Space Station (ISS) again on the STS-114 mission in March 2003;[5] however, due to the loss of Columbia, all Space Shuttles, including Atlantis, were temporarily grounded. Due to rescheduling of missions, Atlantis did not fly again until STS-115 on 9 September 2006.