Today in Space: Rest for Atlantis

It's a well-deserved day off for seven Atlantis astronauts today, after releasing the Hubble Space Telescope and inspecting heat shields Tuesday.

The crew already got ahead of schedule and took care of the one main task that had been planned for this morning, stowing the 50-foot boom used for the inspections.

The crew will take time to answer questions from reporters, and later place a call to the crew of the International Space Station.

You can watch those events live here on The Flame Trench. Click on the picture above to launch a NASA TV viewer.

Another important call could be coming from mission managers by this afternoon. They'll let the crew know if Tuesday's inspections revealed any signs of debris damage to Atlantis, or if the orbiter is cleared for landing a planned 10:03 a.m. Friday landing at Kennedy Space Center.

Today's light schedule was being tweaked slightly, including a slightly earlier wake-up time for the crew. Here's how it looked late Tuesday:

++ 4:01 a.m.: Crew wakes.
++ 8:31 a.m.: Off duty period begins.
++ 10:26 a.m.: Crew news conference.
++ 12:06 p.m.: Ship-to-ship call between Atlantis and International Space Station crews.
++ 7:01 p.m.: Crew sleeps.

Two afternoon press conferences are scheduled from Johnson Space Center in Houston: a mission status briefing at 2 p.m., and a post-Mission Management Team briefing at 4 p.m.