And Atlantis came safely home today, completing the 129th space shuttle mission, the 31st shuttle mission to the ISS, and Atlantis's 31st mission as well. Almost 4.5 million miles (7.25 million kilometers) travelled over almost 11 days. Three spacewalks, one crew exchange and no significant problems to speak of. Both launch and landing went off exactly on schedule.




Mission commander Charlie Hobaugh's post-landing comments:



The launch manifest for the space shuttle fleet is now down to only five remaining flights, with only one of them for Atlantis. Over the coming months, the 24-year-old shuttle will go through all the stages of processing and preparing for a mission for the very last time. Her farewell will be mission STS-132 in May, on which Atlantis will bring the Russian Rassvet module and the European robotic arm to the station, as well as sundry spare parts.

To wrap up the reports on STS-129, here's a video documenting the rollout and launch of Atlantis. It's amazingly well done, and goosebump-inducing. Especially the ignition of the space shuttle main engines at 2.29, followed a few seconds later by the solid rocket boosters are awesome. Also watch out for the visible wobble of the stack at 3.48, as the internal guidance system moves the external tank ever so slightly away from the arms and structures of the tower, the shuttle breaking through the clouds at 4.18, the SRB separation sequence starting at 5.46, and the ET separation at 8.42. So much eye candy, and great music too.

Bishop de Korte's annual letter for Advent has been published on the diocesan website. It briefly goes over a topic that the bishop has repeatedly shown to find important - the financial crisis - and then delves into some aspects of Advent in the light of the concerns many people feel about the state of the nation and the world. In the end, as always, it comes down to our personal relationship with the Lord and our 'friendship with Christ'. I believe this is truly what they call a pastoral letter.

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Brother and sisters,

Happiness ánd discontent

We live in a nice and well-maintained piece of the world. In surveys, the majority of the Dutch people consider themselves happy or very happy. And there is a lot of reason to do so. We have achieved much, both materially and immaterially. The major part of the population is well-educated and prosperous. We have a free press, a constitutional democracy, an independent system of justice and we need not be afraid that a police car will pull up in front of our house and we'll be arrested without just cause. As Christians we can live our faith in freedom, without persecution.

Yet these same surveys also show that many of our countrymen are insecure. We live in a "time of discontent" (Verbrugge) as far as the state of our country and the world is considered. Many are worried about the financial crisis. For most Dutchmen this is still only a threatening thundercloud on the horizon, but one that comes ever nearer. The unemployment rate for 2010 is expected to reach 8%. This causes tension and insecurity for many thousands of families.

In December, an important confrence on the climate will be held in Copenhagen. Many are concerned about the ecological crisis which spreads more and more. Our way of life threatens the world, which for Christians is God's creation.

Apart from the economy and the ecology, the integration of foreign immigrants is also a cause of social unease. This is strenghtened when it concerns our Muslim brothers and sisters. The fear of violence, from small crime to terrorism, is widely spread and populist politicians act as 'merchants of fear'. They put unease into words and at the same they are a catalyst of that unease. Many Catholic Christians share this conflicting situation. They are quite content about their personal situation, but deeply worried about all kinds of issues in the wider world.

Festive month

Against this backdrop we celebrate the usual holidays of the final month of the year: St. Nicholas, Christmas and New Year's Eve. We disperse the darkness and cold of winter with atmospheric lighting, good meals and good company. I sometimes get the impression that most people, churchgoing people included, forget that Christmas is preceded by a long time of preparation. Shop windows are completely decorared for Christmas in the weeks before. The time of Advents is thus decorated for what comes after. But Advent is a time with its own character.

Advent

Advent allows people the chance to stop and come to their senses. Our culture highly prizes efficiency. Time is money, the saying goes, and that is why we must use that time as economically as possible. That is how our society sees time ever more as an opportunity to produce and consume, to increase income and profit. But hopefully a Catholic Christian will be able to transcend this limited approach to time.

The weeks of Advent invite us to approach time in a totally different manner. A Christian is really a person of Advent, a person who lives with a deeply rooted sense of expectation, and not just in the time before Christmas, but in all days of the year. This expectant life is not dependent on whether or not life is good for us. A Christian lives from his faith in a creative God who takes care of this world. God so loves us people that He came to find us in Jesus Christ. During Advent we look towards the feast of the birth of Christ. God's acting in the history of Israel and the public life of Christ created an intense expectation of the future in the early Christians. Jesus' life, but especially His death on the Cross and His resurrection on Easter morning, contains a promise. Our future is safe in God's hands.

Living with trust

Truly looking forward to God's future is not always easy. The flood of negative news and the minor and major concerns of every day threaten to swamp any expectation. This easily causes an attitude of resignation and passivity. This mentality may seem far more realistic than looking forward to the Lord or hoping in a new heaven and a new earth, where justice will rule. Truly living in expectation requires practice. We will have to conquer the doubts and scepticism in our own hearts. This is possible if we life with trust. Trust that we ourselves and our world are carried by God. To Him, we are not disposable. The Lord has not called us to burn out like a rocket in space but to end up with Him. Our God is a loyal God who does not let the work of His hands go idle. God will complete what He started in Christ Himself. Exactly because we expect the great Liberation from God, we can set these small acts of freedom.

Friendship with Christ

In the form of a helpless child has God come to us. Christmas, the feast of the Incarnation, shows us that God is so great that He wanted to come among us as a child. He is so much lord that he desired to live among us in Christ as a serving and reconciling love. I hope that this time of Advent may be a true time of reconsideration for you and for myself. Despite the uncertainty of this time of crisis we may feed the expectation in our hearts with God's Spirit. This is how we can live towards Christmas. In this time of discontent Christ still wants to enter our lives. He is de purpose of our lives, the source of joy and the seal of God's trust. I hope and pray that our friendship with Christ may grow deeper. I wish you an enriching Advent and a blessed Christmas!

+ Gerard de Korte
Bishop of Groningen- Leeuwarden

Before STS-129 flew, astronaut Mike Massimino tagged along with the crew while they were going through various stages of their training. Massimino brought a camera with him and the results of his use of it are now on Youtube under the title 'STS-129 Behind the Scenes'. They're informative, containg interviews with people working in training and mission support, but they're also a lot of fun, not least thanks to Massimino's easygoing banter with his colleagues. Below is the first installment, but there are more on the Nasa Television Youtube page. Episodes three and four (Into the Pool) are great especially.


Contains:
"Prep and Post" - Mike Foreman on his duties during the EVAs and the (dis)comforts of wearing a spacesuit.
"Suit Up and the Hall of Fame" - Leland Melvin suits up (and is compared to Frozone from the Incredibles) and talks about his football career, Mike Foreman explains about egress.
"One Hour Later..." - Leland Melvin assures us that no one trampled anyone else, but his football did get sat on ;)
"Determination" - Mike Foreman about his inspiration.
"The Bench Review (and Scorch's Hat)" - The crew goes over the equipment they'll bring, Mike Foreman unpacks his carefully packed belongings and everyone makes fun of Hobaugh's hat.

I have NASA TV on in a separate window to follow the undocking of space shuttle Atlantis from the ISS. The hatches between the shuttle and the station were closed yesterday and the crews have been preparing their craft for the separation. A thing I've learned is that the entire stack is actually turned around so that the shuttle is at the front. That way the shuttle has full control of the separation. Initially, Atlantis will push itself away from Pressurised Mating Adapter by sets of springs, after which pilot Barry Wilmore will engage the control thrusters and increase the distance further. At some 400 feet out, he will fly Atlantis in a loop around the ISS to allow a good view of the entire station.

Coming home on the shuttle is Nicole Stott (right now, some 3 minutes before undocking, she says her farewells to her former crew mates on the station) after 87 days on the ISS. Her transfer to the crew of STS-129 also signals a change in the overall hierarchy of the ISS crew. Frank De Winne is no longer the commander of the expedition, having handed those duties over to Jeff Williams.

Jeff Williams just announced the departure of Atlantis with Stott over the intercom of the ISS, ringing the station bell which heralds each arrival and departure. Stott is the last ISS crew member who will come home on a space shuttle. All future crew will use Soyuz space craft and whatever future options may become available.

For the first time in six months, the ISS now houses less than six people. Expedition 22, as it is now known, consists of Jeff Williams, Maksim Surayev, Frank De Winne, Roman Romanenko and Robert Thirsk. De Winne, Romanenko and Thirsk will depart on November 30, and their place on the station will be taken by Oleg Kotov, Timothy Creamer and Soichi Noguchi. However, their flight up on Soyuz TMA-17 is set to launch no earlier than December 21st, so I wonder if that would mean that for three weeks, the ISS will be crewed by two people (Williams and Surayev). That would be odd.

( A handful of photos )

In a series on 'Adventurers of the Year', National Geographic interviews astronaut John Grunsfeld, one of the crew of space shuttle mission STS-125 of last May. STS-125 was, of course, the latest and final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Grunsfeld, together with Drew Feustel, Mike Good and Mike Massimin, performed the marathon spacewalks to service the HST, and thus made it possible for the telescope to function well into the next decade. Grunsfeld is also the single most experienced astronaut when it comes to Hubble, having flown on three servicing missions. Not surprisingly, he has become personally attached to the almost twenty-year-old telescope.

Had an idea this morning. Yes, that sometimes happens :) I think it was at least partly influenced by spending last night with Guido and Inge talking about the student parish (among rather a lot else). We've been trying to find ways to reach more people and spread the news of, well, our existence, really. And what better way than national radio?

Every year Dutch radio station 3FM sticks three of its DJs in a glass house for a week. They won't eat (although a dietician makes sure they don't die) and they'll broadcast from there 24 hours a day. Not just for the hell of it either: they do it for a charity. Listeners can 'buy' teir favourite records, things will be auctioned and all kinds of means of generating cash will be done. Outside organisations, companies and even the government usually contribute in small or very big ways (every year, the government has promised to double the amount of money collected).

The action is called Serious Request and this year the cause will be the Red Cross' fight against malaria in developing countries and the glass house will be on the Grote Markt here in Groningen. Since the cause is good, I think it would be worthwhile to try and raise a substantial amount of cash as the St. Augustine student parish. Maybe part or all of the collections of the next few weeks, perhaps in cooperation with the 'regular' St. Martin's parish.
It also helps that there is the possibility of live interaction between the DJ and us as we donate money, all on live radio. Can't hurt.

I sent an email round to the committee members and I'll try and discuss it with Father Wagenaar later this week. Maybe others have some good ideas and hopefully everyone's positive about it. It would be great if we succeeded.

STS-129 continues to proceed according to schedule. The second EVA, by Randy Bresnik and Mike Foreman on Saturday, was completed with no trouble and at a higher pace than planned. The two astronauts managed to perform some tasks that were planned for future EVAs, in addition to the installation and relocation of equipment on the Columbus module and the truss structure.

Today, Robert Satcher and Randy Bresnik are out on the third and last EVA. They'll install a new oxygen tank on the Quest airlock and continue work on heater cables on the Unity module in preparation for the arrival of the Tranquility module.

The major event for the combined Atlantis/ISS crew, late on Saturday, was the news that Randy Bresnik had become the father of a daughter, Abigail Mae. NASA provided for a video link on NASA TV, which the astro- and cosmonauts used to communicate their congratulations to Bresnik's wife and family. Bresnik is, understandably looking forward to coming home. "I will look forward to that landing and Scorch [Commander Charlie Hobaugh] to make it nice and safe. Probably more than anybody has in the history of the space shuttle program."

( Photos )

Sinterklaas was officially welcomed in Groningen today. Music, loads of Black Petes, kids and their parents, the mayor and, indeed, a whopping great cross on Sinterklaas' mitre. How many corrupted minds will this cause, because kids have been exposed to a blatant symbol of Christianity? ;)

As the pro-and anti-Archbishop Eijk parties continue arguing, and the other bishops are slandered whenever anyone sees fit, the international Catholic blogs have been discussing something different altogether: Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams' trip to Rome. He spoke on ecumenism at a conference about the life and work of Dutch Cardinal Willbrands and logically the recent Apostolic Consitution Anglicanorum Coetibus was mentioned as well. Williams' comments did not go down well.

I am curious to read the address and to try and understand where the problems lie. However, that'll likely have to wait until tomorrow, because these things take time.

Some other bloggers have already discussed it. Father Ray Blake dedicates two articles: Williams Argues Like Protestant and What do Anglicans belief [sic] .
Father Dwight Longenecker also writes two pieces: Mr Williams Goes to Rome and Cracks in the Foundation.
Father Z makes do with one piece: Anglican Archbp. Williams to Rome: Set Aside Issue of Female Bishops.
Lastly, the Catholic News Service discusses it here: Outreach to Fomer Anglicans Not Model of Ecumenism, Archbishop Says and Glass Half Full: Anglican Leader, Vatican Officials Assess Ecumenism

Whatever the conclusions may be, I do feel somewhat sorry for Archbishop Williams. He walks a tightrope between the orthodox Anglicans who welcome a closer connection to Rome and the rabid liberals who frown at anything mitre-shaped. In the end, he can't win.

For the second night in a row, the crews of Atlantis and the ISS were woken up by an alarm. Luckily, like before, it was a false one. In both instances the alarm sounded because of an alleged rapid depressurisation. Ventilation fans were shut off in response, which caused a fire alarm to sound in the Columbus module, and last night that alarm sounded again, together with a similar one in the Quest airlock. These were seemingly caused by a depressurisation alarm in the new Poisk module. What caused them is unclear (or NASA isn't saying), but they were of little inconvencience to the crew. They got to sleep in a little later the following morning.

The only two astronauts for whom the routine of today does change are Mike Foreman and Randy Bresnik, who were sleeping in the Quest airlock. Returning Quest to normal configuratin took some 90 minutes, so Foreman and Bresnik went to sleep elsewhere. Both men were in the airlock in preparation for today's EVA. Spacewalking astronauts usually spend the night before their EVA in the pure oxygen environment of Quest, to scrub the nitrogen from their system to avoid a case of the bends once they switch to pure oxygen outside. Instead, Foreman and Bresnik will do some extra exercises to accomplish the same.

It's not that they don't have the time to do so, because the first EVA accomplished all of the tasks set and managed to fit in some more scheduled for the second one. So Foreman and Bresnik could conceivably have less work to do today. Not that NASA won't fit in more go-ahead tasks if they do, mind...

Bresnik is probably going to work today with a sense of trepidation. On Earth, his wife is expecting to give birth to their first child, which was expected to be born yesterday, while Bresnik and the rest of the crew were working inside the ISS. But of course, children don't abide by the plans of others, least of all NASA's.

"I told them, 'Don't the doctors and Rebecca [Bresnik's wife] realize this is NASA and I've got a really well thought out, well-planned, meticulous plan, and they are not abiding by it,'" [flight director Brian] Smith said with a smile. "But I am not going to be able to control that situation. Rebecca's on her own."

Smith and the team of fligth surgeons have provided for Bresnik to be notified as soon as possible if the baby is born today. At least he's surrounded by people who know what it's like: 10 of the 11 men on Atlantis the ISS are fathers, but they won't be lighting cigars. No smoking in space :)

( A handful of photos )