Shuttle Crew Moves Cargo to Space Station
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – It was moving day Friday for the crew of Discovery, which transferred thousands of pounds of supplies and cargo from the space shuttle to the international space station.
The astronauts moved a huge cargo container, nicknamed Leonardo, onto the space station by robotic arm. Among the goodies awaiting the space station crew were a new stationary bicycle for exercise, an oxygen generator that will eventually allow the space station to support six inhabitants, a machine that cools the station’s cabin air and a lab freezer for scientific samples.
"Have fun putting a new room on the station today – the float-in closet, every home needs one," flight controllers in Houston wrote the shuttle crew in their daily morning electronic message.
For the first time in three years, the international space station had three crew members. European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter joined Pavel Vingogradov and Jeff Williams, who marked their 100th day at the space station Friday.
Discovery’s six remaining shuttle crew members awoke Friday to a recording of The Beatles’ "Good Day Sunshine," a choice of astronaut Lisa Nowak’s family.
Nowak and astronaut Stephanie Wilson planned to use the shuttle’s robotic arm and an extended boom to take close-up pictures of areas on the orbiter’s underside that engineers need more information about to reassure themselves that there’s no damage like the kind that doomed Columbia’s flight in 2003.
The boom will look at the shuttle’s nose cap area that eluded earlier photography, and may have some bird droppings on it, and three places where gap filler is sticking out, including one area where the protrusion is as long as an inch. Gap filler is material fitted between thermal tiles to prevent them from rubbing against each other. Two pieces of gap filler had to be removed from Discovery’s belly during a spacewalk last year because of concerns they would cause problems during re-entry.
Engineers also want to look at a panel on the right wing where there appears to be a dark spot in the shape of a claw and another panel where there are two black scuff marks.
The robotic arm and boom were used two days ago to examine the shuttle’s nose cap and wings for damage. Before docking Thursday, Discovery commander Steve Lindsey maneuvered the shuttle into a back flip so that the space station’s crew could photograph the shuttle’s belly and transmit to the images to engineers in Houston.
In their morning message, the flight controllers told the shuttle crew that the shuttle, while docked to the station, wouldn’t be able to use a thruster whose heater malfunctioned since its temperature likely was to drop to 60 degrees, about 30 degrees below the use limit.
Flight controllers also told Discovery’s crew that they expected NASA managers on Friday to extend the mission by a day to allow for a third spacewalk. That would bring the mission to 13 days.
Columbia’s seven astronauts were killed during re-entry when fiery gases entered a breach in the shuttle’s wing. The breach was caused by foam hitting its external tank.
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