Landing weather looks good

The Atlantis astronauts finished a final inspection of the shuttle's wings and nosecap today and will prep their ship Tuesday for a return to Earth the following day.

Mission specialist Leland Melvin used the shuttle's 50-foot robot arm to snatch an equally lengthy inspection boom from the Atlantis payload bay and then carefully scanned the starboard wing, the nosecap and finally the port wing for any damage. Mission commander Stephen Frick and mission specialist Stanley Love assisted during the four-hour, 15-minute inspection. No obvious damage was spotted.

Mission specialists Rex Walheim and Han Schlegel of the European Space Agency stowed spacewalking tools in advance of a planned atmospheric reentry and landing at Kennedy Space Center early Wednesday.

Touchdown is slated for 9:07 a.m. EST, and there would be a second opportunity at 10:42 a.m. EST. But the preliminary weather forecast for landing indicates that the astronauts will have relatively clear skies and light winds.

Here is the long-range ground track for the first opportunity on Orbit 202:



















Here's the mid-range ground track:



















And the short-range ground track:



















You can click to enlarge and save all three of them.

With the Department of Defense poised to shoot down a crippled spy satellite, NASA aims to bring Atlantis home Wednesday if at all possible.

The agency's back-up landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California is being activate just in case, and the weather there Wednesday also is favorable, although there is a slight chance of rain within 30 miles but the conditions.

The crew will start packing up their spaceship early Tuesday and also test flight control systems and the shuttle's steering thrusters. A deorbit briefing will come at about 8 a.m. and at 8:35 a.m., the astronauts will field questions from reporters with ABC, CNN and WRIC-TV in Richmond, Va., where Melvin went to college.

You can watch all the action unfold here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the link below the images above to launch our NASA TV viewer and round-the-clock coverage of STS-122.