In preparation for the STS-118 mission to the International Space Station, NASA is scheduled to rollover space shuttle Endeavour from its hanger, the Orbiter Processing Facility, to the Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building on Monday, July 2.

In the Vehicle Assembly Building, crews will mate Endeavour to its external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters.

The next milestone for Endeavour is the 3.4-mile rollout to Launch Pad 39A, planned for July 11. Endeavour is targeted for launch in early August. During the 11-day mission to the station, Endeavour's crew of seven astronauts will add the Starboard 5 (S5) segment to the right side of the station's backbone, or truss, deliver 5,000 pounds of supplies and conduct repairs.

Suni Williams, KD5PLB, International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 15 Flight Engineer, came back to Earth Saturday, June 23 on the space shuttle Atlantis (STS-117), wrapping up a six month stay during which she became the new record holder for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. While on the ISS, Williams participated in 33 Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contacts. ISS Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur, KC5ACR, holds the record for the most ARISS school contacts in a single mission at 37.

Complete story at http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2007/06/26/

[img=120x140]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/180710main_sts118s001_small.jpg[/img] Like all shuttle missions, STS-118 is about the future: putting the International Space Station a step closer to completion and gathering experience that will help people return to the moon and go on to Mars. But this mission also will see a two decade-old dream realized and a vision of inspiration completed. Twenty-two years after first being selected as Christa McAuliffe's backup in the Teacher in Space Project, Barbara Morgan will strap into space shuttle Endeavour as a fully-trained astronaut. She is one of five mission specialists in the seven-member crew.

Space shuttle Atlantis descended to a smooth landing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., concluding a successful assembly mission to the International Space Station. With Commander Rick Sturckow and Pilot Lee Archambault at the controls, Atlantis landed at 3:49 p.m. EDT.

The STS-117 crew began its mission June 8 and arrived at the station June 10. They quickly began work to install the Starboard 3 and 4 (S3/S4) truss structure to the outpost and retracted a set of arrays on the Port 6 (P6) truss. The (S3/S4) contains a new set of solar arrays that increases station power-generation capabilities. The P6 will be relocated during a future assembly mission.

ARRL Field Day Coordinator Dan Henderson, N1ND, reports that he was contacted several weeks ago NASA regarding the International Space Station's participation during Field Day this year. "As in past years, there is the usual 'soft' plan for at least one of the stations on the ISS being activated for a time during Field Day. As always, this is dependent on the astronauts' work schedule, and always subject to last minute change," Henderson said. For each of the past five or six years, at least one of the residents of the ISS has made an appearance during Field Day. Stations should check the ISS passes -- "No guarantees," Henderson said. "But if it happens, it sure builds the excitement at a Field Day site."

Latest updates on the STS-117 mission are available here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

Hi, this evening over Europe I have seen a great pass.
ISS and Shuttle during the 20:25 UTC transit over Italy were one close to the other...very close.
I hope the weather will permit tomorrow to see again this beautiful pass before the Shuttle return back home.

Claudio IK1SLD

NASA Astronaut Sunita Williams set a new record this morning at 12:47 CDT for the longest duration spaceflight by a woman. At that time, Williams surpassed Shannon Lucid's mark of 188 days, 4 hours set in 1996.

Williams began her record-setting flight when she launched with the crew of STS-116 in December 2006. The Massachusetts native remained onboard the station as a member of the Expedition 14 crew and then joined the Expedition 15 crew in April. Her spaceflight will come to a close when she returns to Earth aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis with the STS-117 crew.

http://ftp.amsat.org/a

NASA is ready and willing to share the international space station (ISS) with other U.S. government agencies and commercial firms once construction of the $100 billion orbital outpost is finished in 2010.

That is the main thrust of a 14-page report NASA sent to Congress in late May outlining a plan for operating the U.S. segment of ISS as a "national laboratory" supported and used by entities other than NASA.

http://www.space.com/spacenews/070611_iss_businessmonday.html

NASA's shuttle Atlantis will spend two extra days in orbit to allow its astronaut crew to repair minor heat shield damage and perform an extra spacewalk at the International Space Station (ISS), mission managers said late Monday.

The extra time will allow engineers on Earth to draw up plans to repair a damaged heat-resistant blanket on the aft exterior of Atlantis, John Shannon, head of NASA's STS-117 Mission Management Team, told reporters during mission briefing here at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"The right answer here, the better part of valor, was to go ahead and put it down and secure it," Shannon said of the damaged blanket.