The space shuttle Atlantis is seen over the Bahamas prior to a perfect docking with the International Space Station at 11:07 a.m. (EDT) on July 10, 2011 on Flight Day 3 of NASA's last shuttle flight.
CREDIT: NASA
NASA has decided to extend its final space shuttle mission by one extra day, agency officials announced today (July 11).
Mission managers opted to add a bonus day to the last flight of shuttle Atlantis to give its four astronauts more time to unpack the enormous amount of cargo they are delivering to the International Space Station.
"There's a lot of good work that we can help the space station program with – if we had more time to give them, we probably would do that as well," LeRoy Cain, chair of Atlantis' mission management team, told reporters in a news briefing today. Atlantis can stay in space an extra day because its power system has about a bonus day's worth of supplies, officials said.
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