SUBMITTED BY ARTHUR N1ORC - AMSAT A/C #31468

Crews Hold News Conference; Atlantis to Undock Sunday

\The STS-115 and Expedition 13 crews are close to wrapping up a constructive week aboard the International Space Station. Today is the last full day of joint operations.

The STS-115 crew arrived Sept. 11 and resumed the assembly of the station with the installation of the P3/P4 truss structure. The crew conducted three spacewalks in four days to prepare the P3/P4 and its solar arrays for operation.

The crews held the traditional joint news conference earlier today. STS-115 Commander Brent Jett said this mission is a good start to the series of upcoming construction flights. “All of the rest of the assembly missions are going to be challenging.” Jett said. “We have similar payloads flying in the future. We are off to a good start on assembly. I think we can pass along a lot of the lessons to the future crews.”

The STS 115 crew enjoyed some much-deserved off duty time this morning. For the remainder of the day, the crews will transfer cargo between Space Shuttle Atlantis and the station.

Atlantis is slated to undock from the station at 8:50 a.m. EDT Sunday. Atlantis is scheduled to land 5:57 a.m. on Wednesday at the Space Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, Fla.

For the latest information on space station activities, please visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html