Astronaut Planning to End Long Trip With Short Walk

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — After four months away from Earth, NASA astronaut Jerry Linenger said Friday he was determined to walk off the shuttle after its planned landing today.

Linenger, homeward-bound after a troubled tour of duty aboard Russia’s space station Mir, said that objective helped him through a tough exercise regime designed to ward off the debilitating effects of space travel.

“To have a goal to walk off the shuttle gave me something to shoot for,” he told NBC-TV in an interview broadcast from the orbiting shuttle’s flight deck.

NASA’s doctors prefer astronauts returning from long stays in space to be carried off the shuttle, but of the three who lived aboard Mir, all but one insisted on walking off.

“If it looks like Jerry has a strong desire to attempt to walk off and it appears to be safe for him to do so we will support him in doing that,” said Roger Billica, chief of medical operations at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “Our preference would be for him to be assisted off.”

During his stay on Mir, Linenger, who lists marathon running and ocean swimming among his hobbies, was supposed to run daily for two hours on a treadmill to keep up his strength.

Although that exercise program was disrupted because of the fire that struck Mir in February, the urgent repair work that followed and problems with life-support systems, Billica said he did not expect any complications after Linenger’s return to Earth.

“He looks like he is going to do just fine,” he said.

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Long periods in space, away from the pull of Earth’s gravity, cause muscles to waste away and bones to weaken.

It will probably take Linenger a few days to get back his “Earth legs” and up to four months to make a full recovery, Billica said.

Atlantis and its crew of seven were scheduled to touch down at the Kennedy Space Center at 7:52 a.m. EDT today.

If the shuttle lands as planned, Linenger will have spent 132 days in space, the second-longest mission for an American astronaut. Shannon Lucid set the U.S. record with a 188-day stay on Mir last year.