The STS-135 mission has been extended for one day, with landing now scheduled for July 21.

NASA had hoped from the beginning that launch and docking would be nominal and the mission could be lengthened by a day. This will allow the astronauts extra time to stow material on the shuttle to return to Earth. Some of the items are malfunctioning pieces of equipment that NASA would like to get back on Earth to determine what caused the failure.

Today, two of the International Space Station (ISS) astronauts, Ron Garan and Mike Fossum, will conduct a spacewalk to move a failed ammonia pump from its stowed location on the outside the ISS into the space shuttle’s cargo bay for return for Earth, for example.

The following events may be of interest in the coming week. For more information, see our calendar on the right menu or click the links below. The House and Senate both are in session this week.

During the Week

Two key events on the Hill are expected this week for NASA. On Tuesday, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on the Space Launch System that Congress directed NASA to build in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. Recent rumors were that NASA would announce the design of the system before the final launch of the space shuttle, but the launch came and went with no announcement. On Wednesday, the full House Appropriations Committee will mark up the FY2012 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) appropriations bill and agree or not with the recommendations of its CJS subcommittee. Those recommendations include a substantial cut to NASA’s FY2012 budget request and termination of the James Webb Space Telescope.

The full House Appropriations Committee will mark up the Interior-Environment appropriations bill on Tuesday. It will have to agree or not with the recommendations from the Interior-Environment subcommittee, which include denying the funding requested by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to take over the Landsat program from NASA.

Tuesday, July 12

• House Science, Space and Technology hearing on NASA’s Space Launch System, 2318 Rayburn, 10:00 am EDT
• House Appropriations Committee mark up of the FY2012 Interior-Environment appropriations bill (includes USGS), 2359 Rayburn, 10:30 am EDT

Wednesday, July 13

• House Appropriations Committee mark up of the FY2012 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) appropriations bill (includes NASA and NOAA), 2359 Rayburn, 10:00 am EDT

Wednesday-Thursday, July 13-14

• NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Astrophysics Subcommittee meeting, NASA Headquarters room 5H45
  • July 13, 8:30 am – 5:30 pm EDT
  • July 14, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm EDT

Friday, July 15

• NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) meeting, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT

UPDATE: This has been updated with the current status of the orbital debris issue.

Space shuttle Atlantis successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) today.

The STS-135 crew docked with ISS at 11:07 am EDT. Their mission is delivering supplies and equipment to the ISS to ensure that it could operate for as long as a year without supplies that are intended to be taken to the ISS by two companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp., under NASA’s “commercial cargo” program. SpaceX has had two successful test launches of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle, one of which also successfully tested its Dragon spacecraft. Orbital has yet to make its first flight of the Taurus 2 launch vehicle or its Cygnus spacecraft. NASA is hoping that both companies will be ready for operational flights to ISS early in 2012.

Meanwhile, on Sunday there was concerned that STS-135 and the ISS might have to dodge a piece of orbital debris on Tuesday. According to NASA, U.S. Strategic Command was tracking a piece of debris from a Russian satellite, Cosmos 375, that might come close to the orbiting facility about noon that day and require a thruster burn to move out of the way. Cosmos 375, launched in 1970, was one of the first satellites launched as part of the Soviet co-orbital antisatellite (ASAT) program.

On Monday, however, NASA’s Bob Jacobs tweeted that it had been determined the debris did not pose a threat.

The STS-135 Atlantis crew completed an inspection of the orbiter’s heat shield using the shuttle’s robotic arm today. The images will be analyzed on the ground to determine if there was any damage during launch yesterday.

Docking is scheduled for Sunday.

President Obama issued a statement of congratulations, saying that while this is the final space shuttle mission, it is the beginning of “the next chapter of our preeminence in space.”

That certainly was the theme reiterated again and again by NASA leaders in Florida in the days leading up to and including the launch as it has been in Washington for many months.

At the post-launch press conference yesterday, NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Director Bob Cabana struck a determined note to emphasize that although change is hard, it is necessary. “Change is difficult. But you can’t do something else, you can’t do something better, unless you go through change.” Taking issue with those who feel that the human spaceflight program is directionless now, he said “we do have a plan” with commercial crew and the International Space Station and a new heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV) to go beyond low Earth orbit. He pointed out that one of the two space shuttle pads, 39B, is being upgraded even though there are no funds for a similar upgrade of pad 39A from which Atlantis was launched. He sees KSC as a “multiuser” facility in the future. He later added that the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) was in no danger of being bulldozed. NASA will need it for the HLLV and commercial companies may also want to use it, he said.

Many of those in attendance at the launch were surprised to see Atlantis lift off almost on time. After a very rainy day on Thursday and early on Friday, the weather improved and looked promising for the launch itself. Cloud cover was problematical, however, for the extremely unlikely Return to Launch Site (RTLS) abort scenario in which all the main engines fail and the shuttle is forced to return to KSC within about 30 minutes of launch. KSC is in charge of the shuttle up through launch. It then hands off control to Johnson Space Center (JSC), so it was JSC that had to decide if the cloud cover and possibility of showers fit within the RTLS guidelines.

At the press conference, shuttle launch integration manager Mike Moses revealed that “we took a bit of an exception” with the rules, convincing themselves that if rain showers did develop, they would be so localized that they would affect only one end of the runway and Atlantis could land at the other end. An RTLS was not necessary – it never has been in the history of the shuttle program – and no showers developed in any case.

A glitch 31 seconds before launch almost spoiled the day, however. As explained at the press conference by shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach, a signal was not sent to computers to indicate that the arm for the “beanie cap” – or gaseous oxygen (GOX) vent arm — had retracted and locked. The beanie cap prevents liquid oxygen vapor that vents from the External Tank (ET) from turning into ice. It is attached to the ET until the final minutes before launch. Engineers were able to use a closed circuit camera to ascertain that it had, in fact, retracted, and the countdown proceeded. Launch occurred three minutes late, at 11:59 am EDT, with only 58 seconds left in the launch window.

The celebratory mood of a successful shuttle launch definitely was dampened by the knowledge that many of those working the launch would soon lose their jobs. NASA Associate Administrator for Space Flight Bill Gerstenmaier was asked about the criticism by some of the human spaceflight program’s most legendary members, including Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan and Jim Lovell, that the program is adrift. If NASA cannot convince them that the program has a promising future, how can it convince the public he was asked.

Gerstenmaier acknowledged that NASA needs to better communicate with those individuals on the work being done on the new HLLV and the Orion crew capsule since much is being done in-house and has not been made public. “Those were my teachers, those were my mentors … so I think I incorporate everything that they bring to us in terms of concerns, but we need to communicate with them. … They may not particularly like it. … They want us to do even more.” He later added that this point in time is not an end, but a transition and NASA needs to explain the new direction to get others “excited with us.”

Tomorrow was supposed to be the day when President Obama and top congressional Republicans and Democrats announced how close they were to a deal on the deficit, but that became clear tonight.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced tonight that he was withdrawing from the talks, which President Obama announced days ago would be broadened to try to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years instead of only $2 trillion over 10 years.

In a statement, Boehner complained that Democrats continued to insist on tax increases:

“Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes. I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase.”

Democratic insistence that tax increases be part of the deal as well as the spending cuts demanded by Republicans is hardly news, however. The second highest-ranking Republican in the House, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), walked out of the Biden-led talks referred to in Boehner’s statement on June 23 over the same issue. Cantor’s action is what prompted President Obama to talk over leadership of the negotiations.

Space aficionados may have their attention focused on Kennedy Space Center and whether the shuttle will launch today, but back in Washington, raising the debt limit still dominates the news.

For a brief moment yesterday, hopes were raised that a deal might be struck by the end of this weekend. The President changed the game by proposing that everyone think bigger, trying to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years instead of $2 trillion. In that case, he said, everything would be on the table, including cuts to Medicare and Social Security. For his part, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) reportedly agreed that under those circumstances, revenue increases also could be considered. Boehner was widely quoted as saying that there might be as good as a 50-50 chance agreement could be reached this weekend.

According to media reports, the two men met secretly on Sunday and those discussions laid the groundwork for yesterday’s proposal at a White House meeting among the President and House and Senate Republican and Democratic leaders.

The problem was that the President apparently had not consulted in advance with top Democrats in Congress about the potential of cutting Medicare and Social Security. Democrats traditionally are protectors of those programs. The National Journal (subscription required) quoted Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass) as saying of the President that “I thought he was still a Democrat.”

Senate Republicans were not thrilled either to learn that revenue increases were now being put on the table by one of their own party members.

For his part, the President said: “Everybody acknowledged that we have to get this done before the hard deadline of August 2nd to make sure that America does not default for the first time on its obligations. And everybody acknowledged that there’s going to be pain involved politically on all sides.”

He announced that White House and congressional staff will work through the weekend and he and the congressional leadership will reconvene on Sunday. What will be decided is anyone’s guess. For the space program, it is not likely to be good news.

The meetings are to resolve differences between the parties so that Congress will agree to raise the debt limit. The United States Government surpassed the $14.3 trillion limit in May and remains solvent because the Treasury Department is not contributing what it should to federal government employee retirement accounts. It promises to repay those accounts once this situation is resolved. August 2 is the most recent date the Administration has set for when Congress must raise the limit to avoid a government default. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner uses words like “catastrophic” to describe the effect of a default.

UPDATE: It’s about 4:45 am and NASA continues to report that they are working no technical issues that would prevent launch at 11:26 am this morning. The only issue is weather. It is overcast here at the press site next to the Vehicle Assembly Building (about 3 miles from the launch pad). The shuttle — brightly illuminated — is beautifully visible from here and one can almost believe that the weather will ultimately cooperate. But this reporter is not taking any bets. Follow us on Twittter: @spcplcyonline

ORIGINAL STORY:

Hoping that Mother Nature will give them a break, space shuttle Atlantis mission managers decided to proceed with tanking — filing the shuttle’s External Tank with fuel — despite the very gloomy weather forecast for today.

Weather has to be acceptable not only at the time of launch, but for a period afterwards in case the shuttle might need to perform a “return to launch site” abort. In that particular type of launch abort scenario, the orbiter would turn around after launch and fly back to Kennedy Space Center meaning that the visibility and other weather parameters have to be conducive to landing as well as launch.

NASA said it would reevaluate the weather again around 6:00 or 7:00 am. At the moment, there is still only a 30 percent chance that weather will be acceptable. Check back here for updates or follow us on Twtter: @spcplcyonline

UPDATE: The press conference has slipped to about 1:00 EDT.

UPDATE: Overloaded wi-fi and cell phone networks here are making it almost impossible to post to this website or Twitter. Atlantis got off, but three minutes late due to a last minute hiccup at T-31 seconds. Now awaiting a regularly scheduled post-launch press conference to learn more details.

UPDATE: Atlantis is off!

UPDATE: The weather is a bit better at the moment and the range is “green” — meaning “go” — right now. The countdown is in a planned hold at T-9 minutes with launch still scheduled for 11:26 am. NASA says it is “cautiously optimistic” that the launch will take place as planned.

UPDATE: All four crewmembers are aboard, the hatch is closed, and they are preparing to pressurize the cabin.

ORIGINAL STORY: The countdown for the launch of Atlantis scheduled for 11:26 am EDT this morning is continuing. The weather forecast remains only 30 percent favorable, but the skies appear a little lighter at the moment and the mood definitely is hopeful.

The crew just arrived at the pad and the close-out crew is getting them settled in their suits. The first to board, Commander Chris Ferguson, is about to enter the orbiter.