Live in orbit: Crew excited about satellite attack

Aiming to land at Kennedy Space Center early Wednesday, the Atlantis astronauts say they will be keeping close tabs on a U.S. Navy attempt to obliterate a crippled U.S. spy satellite after the shuttle and its crew are safely on the ground.

"Well, of course, my first thought, when we talk about that, is Go Navy," said Atlantis mission commander Stephen Frick, a U.S. Navy Captain. His pilot, Alan Poindexter, holds the same rank with the same branch of the military.

"Both Capt. Poindexter and myself are obviously very excited about the upcoming event they are going to have with the satellite. We're interested to see how it happens," he said.

Frick and his crew are scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center at 9:07 a.m. Wednesday. A second opportunity would come at 10:42 a.m. Wednesday.

The U.S. Navy is waiting for the shuttle to return to Earth before it attempts to launch a missile from a cruiser and blast apart a failed National Reconnaissance Office spacecraft as it crosses the Pacific Ocean.

The NRO lost control of the classified technology demonstration satellite shortly after its December 2006 launch, and it has been dropping back toward the upper atmosphere ever since.

The dead satellite cannot be guided to a safe splashdown in the Pacific. So the Navy will try to destroy the spacecraft before it tumbles out of orbit with a tank of toxic fuel that could leak and endanger people wherever it lands.

Frick said the satellite attack will not endanger Atlantis or the International Space Station.

"We're not concerned about it. Certainly we're going to be safely on the ground and the space station is going to be safely well above the deorbiting satellite. But we'll be interested to watch it and see what happens," he said.

The Navy is facing a relatively short window to blast the satellite to pieces before it makes an uncontrolled reentry sometime in early March. So NASA is pulling out the stops to get Atlantis out of orbit as soon as possible.

Both KSC and a back-up landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California will be open on Wednesday, and NASA fully intends to get the shuttle on the ground that day.

"Well, we're certainly very hopeful about getting home tomorrow to the Kennedy Space Center. It sounds like we'll be very likely to land at either Kennedy or Edwards tomorrow, and we'd like very much to land at Kennedy," Frick said.

"All of our families are waiting for us there, and we've been up here for close to two weeks for most of us, and Dan of course has been up here much longer. So we're very excited to see our families. We miss them very much and we're looking forward to getting home."

You can watch the remainder of the shuttle mission unfold here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the link below the images above to launch our NASA TV viewer.

The image on the left is from the Air Force 45th Space Wing Weather Channel. The forecast for landing at KSC Wednesday remains favorable. Clear skies and light winds are expected.