Astronauts Wrapping Up Preparations for Landing Early Thursday

Space shuttle Atlantis’ crew is wrapping up final preparations for its planned landing at 5:56:58 a.m. EDT Thursday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew stowed the Ku-Band antenna, used for high-data rate communications and television from space, at 11:34 a.m. and will go to sleep at 1:29 p.m.

Mission managers have cleared Atlantis’ heat shield for entry after reviewing results of the “late inspection” survey of the shuttle’s reinforced carbon carbon.

The STS-135 landing ground tracks for Thursday’s two Kennedy landing opportunities are here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts135/news/landing.html

The official Spaceflight Meteorology Group landing forecast for Kennedy remains very favorable.