STS-102 MISSION ARCHIVE (COMPLETE) Updated: 03/21/01 Space Station Assembly Mission 5A.1: Crew rotation; lab outfitting By William Harwood CBS News/Kennedy Space Center The following copy originally was posted on the Current Mission space page at http://cbsnews.cbs.com/network/news/space/index.html. Comments, suggestions and corrections welcome! TABLE OF CONTENTS -STS-102 countdown begins (03/05/01) -Low temperature only issue for Thursday launch (03/06/01) -Weather favorable; shuttle set for fueling (03/07/01) -Shuttle Discovery rockets into orbit (03/08/01) -Shuttle closes in on space station (03/09/01) -Running late, Discovery docks with space station (03/10/01) -Helms and Voss stage record spacewalk (03/11/01) -Astronauts mount Leonardo module on station (03/12/01) -Thomas and Richards stage smooth spacewalk (03/13/01) -Helms moves aboard station; completes crew rotation (03/14/01) -Mission extended one day for cargo work (03/15/01) -Station crew eager for homecoming (03/16/01) -Mir veterans lament station's passing (03/17/01) -Leonardo returned to shuttle's cargo bay (03/18/01) -Discovery undocks from space station (03/19/01) -Shuttle crew packs up for landing (03/20/01) -Discovery glides to smooth pre-dawn touchdown (03/21/01) =================================================================== Countdown begins for shuttle Atlantis (03/05/01) Countdown clocks began ticking today at the Kennedy Space Center for launch of the shuttle Discovery early Thursday on a flight to ferry the international space station's second full-time crew into orbit. With forecasters predicting a 70 percent chance of good weather, launch of the 103rd shuttle mission is targeted for 6:42:10 a.m. Thursday, the moment Earth's rotation carries launch pad 39B into the plane of the space station's orbit. The countdown began on time at 10 a.m. today. The only issue is low temperatures that could cause ice to build up on the shuttle's external fuel tank. The forecast for Friday calls for a 90 percent chance of good weather while the outlook is 80 percent "go" should launch slip to Saturday. Here are the launch windows for Thursday, Friday and Saturday:: DATE....WINDOW OPEN.....LAUNCH..........WINDOW CLOSE 03/08...06:37:10 a.m....06:42:10 a.m....06:47:10 a.m. 03/09...06:14:39 a.m....06:19:39 a.m....06:24:39 a.m. 03/10...05:48:50 a.m....05:53:50 a.m....05:58:50 a.m. Discovery's crew arrived at the Florida spaceport around 10:45 p.m. Sunday: Commander James Wetherbee, pilot James Kelly and spacewalkers Andrew Thomas and Paul Richards. In the trivia department, Richards will be the 400th human to venture into space. Joining the shuttle crew for launch will be space station Expedition Two commander Yury Usachev, James Voss and Susan Helms. Usachev and his crewmates will replace the station's current crew, commander William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. Shepherd and company were launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft on October 31. Touchdown aboard shuttle Discovery at 2:02 a.m. on March 20 will close out a mission spanning 139 days and 23 hours. "I hear Discovery is ready for us," Voss told reporters Sunday night. "We are ready to go up to the international space station, get first-hand information from the Expedition One crew, take over and stay there for four-and-a-half or five months." In other space news, the shuttle Atlantis is on the way to the Kennedy Space Center atop a Boeing 747 transport jet. Atlantis landed at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on Feb. 20, but bad weather has prevented NASA from getting the ship back to Florida until now. The shuttle Columbia, meanwhile - fresh from a lengthy overhaul and upgrade at Palmdale, Calif. - remains on the ground at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, because of similar weather problems. Columbia will make the final leg of the trip to Florida as soon as weather and Discovery's launch preparations permit. The NASA television schedule is posted below, along with the latest summary flight plan, countdown highlights, ascent events summary and launch windows. =================================================================== Low temperature only issue for Thursday launch (03/06/01) Launch preparations at the Kennedy Space Center continue to proceed smoothly toward liftoff of the shuttle Discovery Thursday on a mission to ferry the international space station's second full-time crew into orbit. There are no technical problems at pad 39B and only minor concern about the weather, with a 30 percent chance that low temperatures, combined with wind and humidity, could lead to ice formation on the shuttle's external fuel tank. Launch is targeted for 6:42:11 a.m. EST Thursday, one second later than yesterday's projection. The forecast calls for just a few clouds at 2,000 feet and winds from 300 degrees at six knots peaking to 12 knots. That translates into a maximum crosswind component of just 5.7 knots on KSC runway 15/33, well below NASA's 15-knot limit for an emergency return-to-launch-site abort. But the temperature is expected to be around 44 degrees at launch time. While the forecast is generally favorable, there's a chance the variables of wind speed, humidity, dew point and temperature could combine to cause ice to build up on the tank. Excessive buildups would pose an impact hazard during launch as ice chunks shake free and fall away. "If the winds stay up the way I've got them and the temperatures do not get any worse than that, we'll be in good shape," said shuttle forecaster Ed Priselac. "The 30 percent is based on uncertainty with these kind of cold, transitory systems we have on the East Coast," he said. "It's a little hard to encapsulate how the temperatures will behave and the winds as well." The only other weather-related issue of any note is the rough seas that NASA's two booster recovery ships will encounter. The ships are scheduled to leave Port Canaveral at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, but 16-foot seas are expected in the Gulf Stream. NASA managers may delay departure, but this is not a constraint to launch. Should launch slip to Friday, forecasters predict a 90 percent chance of good weather with an 80 percent chance of "go" conditions on Saturday. Here are the revised launch windows for Thursday through Saturday, based on the latest radar tracking of the international space station: DATE....WINDOW OPEN.....LAUNCH..........WINDOW CLOSE 03/08...06:37:11 a.m....06:42:11 a.m....06:47:11 a.m. 03/09...06:14:40 a.m....06:19:40 a.m....06:24:40 a.m. 03/10...05:48:51 a.m....05:53:51 a.m....05:58:51 a.m. At launch pad 39B, meanwhile, engineers have completed checkout of Discovery's cockpit displays and computer systems and closed the ship's 60-foot-long cargo bay doors for flight. This morning, the launch team is loading liquid hydrogen and oxygen to power the shuttle's three electrical generators. At 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, a protective gantry will be rolled away from the orbiter, exposing Discovery to view and setting the stage for fueling tomorrow evening just before 10 p.m. "We're working right on the timeline with no issues, our flight and ground hardware and personnel are performing exceptionally well and we're all looking forward to the launch ... early Thursday morning," said NASA test director Pete Nickolenko. =================================================================== Weather favorable; shuttle set for fueling (03/07/01) With good weather expected, engineers are readying the space shuttle Discovery for fueling this evening, on track for a launch attempt at 6:42:09 a.m. Thursday. The only concern is a 30 percent chance of low temperatures that could result in potentially dangerous ice buildups on the shuttle's external fuel tank. The forecast improves to 90 percent go Friday. The goal of the 103rd shuttle mission is to deliver the international space station's next full-time crew, along with nearly 10,000 pounds of equipment and supplies, including the first suite of experiment hardware for the new Destiny laboratory module. On board will be commander James Wetherbee, pilot James Kelly, Andrew Thomas, Paul Richards and the space station's second crew, Russian commander Yury Usachev, James Voss and Susan Helms. As with all space station rendezvous missions, Discovery's launch time is set for the moment Earth's rotation carries the launch pad into the plane of the station's orbit. The actual launch window, i.e., the period in which the shuttle could, in theory, reach the station, is 10 minutes long and opens five minutes before the pad is "in plane" with the target. The exact launch time will be adjusted slightly just before liftoff based on the latest radar tracking of the space station. For now, here are the latest launch window estimates for Thursday and Friday: DATE....WINDOW OPEN.....LAUNCH..........WINDOW CLOSE 03/08...06:37:10 a.m....06:42:09 a.m....06:47:08 a.m. 03/09...06:14:34 a.m....06:19:33 a.m....06:24:49 a.m. Assuming no problems crop up today, engineers will begin pumping a half-million gallons of rocket fuel into Discovery's external tank starting around 9:47 p.m. this evening. The procedure should be complete by 1 a.m. or so. NASA television coverage will begin at 1:30 a.m. A photo opportunity with Discovery's crew is planned for 1:42 a.m. Wetherbee and company will begin suiting up at 2:22 a.m. and head for the launch pad to begin strapping in at 2:52 a.m. Here is the remainder of Discovery's countdown to launch: TIME.........EVENT 03/07 09:47 p.m....T-minus six hours: Resume countdown 09:47 p.m....Begin fueling 03/08 12:47 a.m....Fueling complete; external tank in stable replenish mode 12:47 a.m....T-minus three hours: Begin a two-hour hold 01:30 a.m....NASA television coverage begins 01:42 a.m....Crew snack photo opportunity 02:12 a.m....Crew receives a final weather briefing 02:22 a.m....Crew dons pressure suits 02:47 a.m....The countdown resumes at the T-minus three-hour mark 02:52 a.m....The astronauts depart crew quarters, head for launch pad 03:22 a.m....The astronauts begin strapping in for launch 04:37 a.m....The shuttle's cabin hatch is closed for flight 05:27 a.m....T-minus 20 minutes: Begin a 10-minute hold 05:37 a.m....T-minus 20 minutes: Resume countdown 05:38 a.m....Backup flight computer verification 05:48 a.m....T-minus nine minutes: Begin adjustable final hold 06:30 a.m....Mission management team gives final "go" for launch 06:33 a.m....T-minus nine minutes: Resume countdown 06:37 a.m....Launch window opens 06:37 a.m....Hydraulic power unit start 06:42 a.m....Launch of Discovery on mission STS-102 06:47 a.m....Launch window closes 06:51 a.m....Main engine cutoff; shuttle reaches preliminary orbit If all goes well, Discovery will dock with the space station at 12:36 a.m. on March 10. For readers planning ahead, here is a brief timeline of major mission events (a detailed flight plan is posted below): TIME.......DD...HH...MM...EVENT 03/08/01 06:42 AM...00...00...00...STS-102 launch from pad 39B 11:42 AM...00...05...00...Crew sleep begins 07:42 PM...00...13...00...Crew wakeup 03/10/01 12:36 AM...01...17...54...Shuttle docks with space station 01:12 AM...01...18...30...Hatch opening 11:47 PM...02...17...05...Spacewalk No. 1 begins 03/11/01 07:12 AM...03...00...30...Spacewalk No. 1 ends 03/12/01 12:17 AM...03...17...35...Cargo carrier attached to station 11:47 PM...04...17...05...Spacewalk No. 2 begins 03/13/01 03:47 AM...04...21...05...Spacewalk No. 2 ends 03/17/01 01:57 AM...08...19...15...Cargo carrier returned to shuttle cargo bay 08:12 PM...09...13...30...Farewell ceremony 10:57 PM...09...16...15...Shuttle undocks from space station 03/20/01 12:59 AM...11...18...17...Deorbit ignition 02:02 AM...11...19...20...Landing =================================================================== Shuttle Discovery rockets into orbit (03/08/01) 04:30 a.m., 03/08/01, Update: Shuttle Discovery fueled for launch The shuttle Discovery is fueled for launch, its seven-member crew is strapped in and with no technical problems of any significance, launch remains on track for 6:42:09 a.m. The exact launch time w It is a beautiful morning on Florida's space coast, with a clear sky and brisk temperatures. While frost can be seen on the shuttle's external tank, there are no signs - yet! - of any potentially dangerous ice buildups. The weather at two of NASA's emergency runways in Europe also is acceptable, with Moron, Spain, designated as the primary landing site in case of a main engine failure midway through ascent. Ideal conditions are expected at the Kennedy Space Center where Discovery's crew could attempt a landing after a main engine failure during the first two-and-a-half minutes of flight. Here is the remainder of this morning's countdown: TIME.........EVENT 04:37 a.m....The shuttle's cabin hatch is closed for flight 05:27 a.m....T-minus 20 minutes: Begin a 10-minute hold 05:37 a.m....T-minus 20 minutes: Resume countdown 05:38 a.m....Backup flight computer verification 05:48 a.m....T-minus nine minutes: Begin adjustable final hold 06:30 a.m....Mission management team gives final "go" for launch 06:33 a.m....T-minus nine minutes: Resume countdown 06:37 a.m....Launch window opens 06:37 a.m....Hydraulic power unit start 06:42 a.m....Launch of Discovery on mission STS-102 06:47 a.m....Launch window closes 06:51 a.m....Main engine cutoff; shuttle reaches preliminary orbit The goal of the 103rd shuttle mission is to deliver a replacement crew to the international space station, along with nearly 10,000 pounds of equipment and supplies. As with all shuttle-station rendezvous missions, Discovery's launch is timed to coincide with the moment Earth's rotation carries the launch pad into the plane of the space station's orbit. At the moment of launch, the space station will be over the south Pacific Ocean about 1,000 miles south of Perth, Australia, approaching the Florida spaceport. It will pass over the launch pad a few minutes after takeoff. The lab's crew - commander William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev - may be able to see Discovery's exhaust plume as they pass overhead. NASA flight controllers in Houston plan to uplink live video of Discovery's launch. 07:25 a.m., 03/08/01, Update: Discovery thunders into space Editor's Note... The following story also is posted on the Spaceflight Now web site. By dawn's early light, the shuttle Discovery rocketed into orbit today and set off after the international space station to deliver the lab's second full-time crew and nearly five tons of supplies and equipment. With its three three hydrogen-fueled main engines firing at full throttle, Discovery's two solid-fuel boosters ignited with a ground-shaking roar at 6:42:09 a.m. - two minutes after sunrise - instantly pushing the 4.5-million-pound spacecraft away from pad 39B. The shuttle cleared the top of the launch pad gantry in under 10 seconds, rolled about its vertical axis to put the crew in a heads-down orientation beneath the external tank and thundered away on a trajectory paralleling the East Coast. "Roll program, Houston," commander James Wetherbee radioed as the shuttle climbed skyward. "Roger roll, Discovery," called astronaut Gus Loria from mission control. With a cloudless, crystal clear sky, Discovery's on-time launch was visible for miles around, a spectacular sky show for area residents and tourists gathered along nearby roads and beaches. The exhaust from the ship's boosters appeared reddish brown close to the pad and then changed to brilliant white as the vehicle climbed higher into the light of the rising sun. Discovery's countdown was timed to hit zero at the moment Earth's rotation carried the launch pad into the plane of the space station's orbit. At liftoff, the station was about 1,000 miles south of Perth, Australia, some 11,300 miles from the Kennedy Space Center. Flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston uplinked live video of Discovery's launching through the station's video conferencing system. In addition, station commander William Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko were told to look for Discovery's exhaust plume when they passed northwest of the Florida spaceport around 7:25 a.m. By launching directly into that orbital plane, Discovery's crew was able to minimize the propellant necessary to reach its target orbit while improving the odds of reaching the outpost even if a main engine fails to perform at full power. But the ascent appeared flawless and eight-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, Discovery slipped into a preliminary elliptical orbit with a high point of 138 miles and a low point of just 37 miles. About 40 minutes after launch, the crew fired the shuttle's twin orbital maneuvering system rockets to put the craft in an orbit measuring 136 miles by 115 miles. Wetherbee and his crewmates - pilot James Kelly, Andrew Thomas, Paul Richards and the station's second full-time crew, Russian commander Yury Usachev, James Voss and Susan Helms - then began doffing their pressure suits and stowing no longer needed seats. The primary goal of the 103rd shuttle flight is to exchange station crews. Shepherd and company will return to Earth aboard Discovery on March 20 after 140 days in space, leaving Usachev and his two crewmates behind aboard the station. The actual crew transfer will take place in stages, however, with Usachev officially taking Gidzenko's place aboard the station shortly after the shuttle docks early Saturday. Voss will take Krikalev's place early next week, after a spacewalk overnight Saturday by Voss and Helms. Finally, Helms will move aboard the station late next week, formally taking Shepherd's place. Crew transfers become official with installation of a custom Soyuz seat liner fitted to support the new flier in case of an emergency that might require a return to Earth in the Russian spacecraft. The staggered transfer process is required to give Shepherd time to fully brief his replacement on station operations and to allow Voss and Helms to complete their shuttle assignments. "Yury Usachev and Yuri Gidzenko both fly the center seat of the Soyuz, so it's very logical that they change at the same time so that the seat allocations in the Soyuz are preserved," Thomas said in a NASA interview. "But the main thing, of course, is that Yury Usachev will be the commander and he needs to work directly with the Expedition 1 commander, Bill Shepherd, on what we call handover. "It's very important that he get a lot of time, one-on-one, with Bill Shepherd," Thomas continued. "That's why he's exchanging first, and Yuri Gidzenko will come to the shuttle and then Yury Usachev can spend this very important time doing handover operations with Bill Shepherd." Usachev will be the station's first Russian commander. But Voss and Helms both speak fluent Russian, Usachev speaks English and all three seem to enjoy working together. "We do defer to Yuri as the commander among the group as the person who has the ultimate decision among us if we have a disagreement about anything having to do with the mission," Helms said at a news conference. "Both Jim and I absolutely trust Yuri to make that final decision as our commander. So right off the bat, I think we have got a good rapport among us." Said Voss: "I consider myself blessed to have two people who I get along with very well to be crewmates for a long stay in space." If all goes well, Wetherbee will guide Discovery to a docking with the space station around 12:36 a.m. Saturday after a two-day orbital chase. Unlike recent dockings in which shuttle crews approached from directly above or below the station, Wetherbee will approach from a point directly in front of the outpost with Discovery's tail pointing toward Earth and its belly facing in the direction of travel. Dockings from above and below can take advantage of Earth's gravity and orbital mechanics to provide a natural braking force, which allows shuttle pilots to minimize the use of upward-firing thrusters that might damage the station's solar arrays or optical sensors. But Discovery must dock at a port on the forward end of the Destiny laboratory module. "Unfortunately, as the space station gets bigger and bigger, it does not have the capability, or we desire not to maneuver it such that we can approach from below," Wetherbee said. "We'd like to leave it in the current (orientation so) it'll always be flying in parallel to the surface of the Earth. We have to approach from in front of the space station, and we don't have the natural braking capability due to orbital mechanics. "And so we have to be very careful as we're approaching," he said. "We don't want to plume the station with our braking jets. ... This is the way we'll do it into the future, because, again, as it gets bigger and bigger, you really don't want to maneuver it very much." The station currently is made up of four pressurized modules connected end to end. NASA's Destiny laboratory module, attached last month, is bolted to the multi-hatch Unity node. Unity, in turn, is connected to the Russian-built NASA-financed Zarya module, which is attached to the Russian Zvezda command module. The Soyuz ferry craft that carried Shepherd, Gidzenko and Krikalev into orbit is bolted to Zarya's Earth-facing, or nadir port. An unmanned Progress supply ship is docked to Zvezda's aft port while a shuttle docking port called PMA-2 is attached to Destiny's forward port at the far end of the station. Unity's two side hatches current are vacant, but its upward-facing port is occupied by a boxy structural truss that houses the station's four stabilizing gyroscopes. Bolted to the top of the Z1 is the P6 solar array, which provides most of the station's electrical power. The two panels making up the P6 array stretch 240 feet from tip to tip, oriented like two huge wings extending to either side of the station's central axis. Discovery's primary payload is the Italian-built Leonardo pressurized logistics module, a dedicated space station cargo carrier that will be used periodically to carry supplies and equipment to the complex. Leonardo is designed to be attached to the station like any other pressurized module and if all goes well, Thomas, operating the shuttle's robot arm, will dock the cargo carrier to Unity's downward facing port early Monday. The station crew then will open hatches between the cargo carrier and the station and begin moving some 9,600 pounds of equipment and supplies on board. But Unity's downward-facing port currently is occupied by a shuttle docking adapter called PMA-3. Before Leonardo can be attached, PMA-3 must be removed and re-mounted on Unity's unoccupied port, or left-side, hatch. That work will occur during the first of two spacewalks planned for Discovery's mission. Voss and Helms are scheduled to begin the planned seven-hour excursion just before midnight Saturday. The first items on the agenda are to disconnect electrical cables between Unity and PMA-3. The spacewalkers then will attach a cradle to Destiny's hull that will be used later to anchor the station's robot arm, scheduled for installation in April. Helms and Voss also will mount a so-called rigid umbilical to Destiny that will route video and data from the Canadian-built robot arm after it is installed next month. A major objective of the Expedition 2 crew's stay aboard the station is to check out and activate the complex robot arm before arrival of the station's main airlock in June. The robot arm is required to install the airlock. After cleaning up the cargo bay, Voss and Helms will return to Discovery's airlock and hook their spacesuits up to shuttle air and power. Then they will stand by while Thomas, operating the shuttle's robot arm, removes PMA-3 and reposition's it on the port side of the Unity module. If any problems develop, Voss and Helms can resume their spacewalk to help out as necessary. Assuming no problems develop, they will start repressurizing the airlock around 7 a.m. to wrap up the 101st U.S. spacewalk. The next day, Thomas will use the robot arm to mount Leonardo on Unity's nadir port and the crew will begin work to transfer nearly five tons of equipment and supplies to the space station. "Within Leonardo, we're carrying the robotics work station for the international space station," Thomas said. "This is the system of video monitors, computers and hand controls that will enable operators to actually run the space station robotic arm when it comes up (in April), so it's a very important piece of equipment. "They'll be transferring a DC-to-DC Converter Unit that's in one of the racks that will be providing power for the lab module. Obviously, that's a very important thing to have. There [are] a lot of tools, logistics, water transfer equipment. "There's a cycle ergometer exercise system that has to go across and things like that," Thomas said. "So, they're going to be very busy getting all of that equipment across. And some of it needs to be done fairly promptly." And Leonardo also carries the Human Research Facility rack, a suit of life science experiments that represents the space station's first research equipment. Shortly after 7 a.m. on Monday, the station crew will open the hatches leading into Leonardo to begin equipment transfers. Later that night, Thomas and Richards will begin the mission's second spacewalk to connect power lines to an equipment storage rack on the station's hull. The excursion is expected to last just four hours or so. Helms will assist with the spacewalk by acting as the overall coordinator, helping Thomas and Richards stay on their timeline. Once the spacewalk is complete, Helms will take Shepherd's place aboard the station, completing the crew transfer process. The space station currently is equipped with just two staterooms, both in the Russian Zvezda command module. Voss and Usachev will use those sleep stations while Helms will bunk in the U.S. laboratory module, Destiny. Voss said he plans to rig up a privacy curtain for Helms in a vacant experiment bay in the lab module, setting up an impromptu stateroom in the scientific heart of the complex. "Susan Helms will (change) positions with Bill Shepherd, who will have, by then, completed his handover as commander, and he will come on board the shuttle, completing the entire crew transfer," Thomas said. "Of course, there's still a lot of work to be done. There's still equipment on board that needs to be transferred between the two vehicles mostly from the MPLM. There's still a lot of discussion between the two Expedition crews about day-to-day operations - what we call handover - to make sure that the new crew persons understand where everything is and what the day-to-day operational procedures require and things like that." Thomas spent more than four months aboard the Russian Mir space station. And in a news conference before launch, he offered some advice to Usachev, Voss and Helms: "You've got to avoid what I call the 'Groundhog Day' syndrome," he said. "Just like in that movie, 'Ground Hog Day,' where every day looks just like every other day and they all roll one into another and each day's identical and the novelty of the days wears off, suddenly you lose interest. You've got to find ways to avoid the Groundhog Day syndrome. "If you remember that movie, the lead character did that by using his time creatively, doing things that interested him. In a sense, that's a good metaphor for the way you do a station flight. You use that time, that unique opportunity you have, to find ways of getting your recreational needs and your personal needs met." For recreation, station crews can watch DVD movies, chat with friends and family members using a teleconferencing system, send and receive email, exercise and, of course, look out the window at the Earth passing by 240 miles below. "I'm taking books . . . some personal books, some I've read before, some new ones that I haven't read to enjoy reading in space, a small bible," Voss said. "I'm also taking a bunch of photographs of my family, friends, my dog, my airplane - things that I know that I'll miss that I'd like to see once in a while." Helms said she plans to finall read "War and Peace" during her stay aboard the station. If all goes well, the equipment transfer work will be complete by the night of March 16. The next morning, the shuttle crew will detach Leonardo, now loaded with 2,630 pounds of trash and equipment no longer needed aboard the station, and re-berth it in Discovery's cargo bay for return to Earth, With Leonardo safely tucked away, the Discovery is scheduled to undock from the station at 10:57 p.m. the night of March 17. As usual with shuttle-station undockings, Discovery's pilot - James Kelly - will be at the controls for a photo-documentation fly around. "We're planning on doing basically a full loop all the way around the station, back up to the top, and then we're going to separate from there," Kelly said in a NASA interview. "The major reason we do the fly-around is basically to do an exterior survey of the station. The station's going to change throughout its years, either from micrometeoroid debris hits or wear and tear or as EVAs happen. They're changing the outside of the station constantly. They're putting new gear on, moving things around, stuff like that. There's going to be some deterioration, things like that. "So we want to get a good photographic record of all these things. We do the fly-around to basically take a photo survey of the outside of the station and see if anything has changed, and we take as many pictures as we can with different types of cameras." Discovery is scheduled to return to Earth around 2 a.m. on March 20. =================================================================== Shuttle Discovery closes in on space station (03/09/01) 04:15 a.m., 03/09/01, Update: Astronauts inspect spacesuits, test robot arm; station rendezvous continues The Discovery astronauts fired one of the shuttle's two orbital manuevering system engines late Thursday to fine tune the ship's approach to the international space station. Before the 16-second rocket firing by the right-side OMS engine, Discovery's orbit had a high point, or apogee, of 170 miles and a low point, or perigee, of 146 miles. The shuttle was trailing the station by 6,250 miles and closing at a rate of 721 miles per orbit. The rocket firing put Discovery in an orbit measuring 171 by 151 miles and decreased the closing rate slightly to 717 miles per orbit. Another rocket firing is planned for Friday morning, around 9:13 a.m., to further tweak the shuttle's approach. If all goes well, Discovery will dock with the international space station at 12:36 a.m. Saturday after a two-day orbital chase. In a "morning" message to the crew, flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston congratulated the astronauts for "a spectacular launch" Thursday morning from the Kennedy Space Center. "We were all so excited to see the Expedition 2 crew headed to station after so many years of training," the note said. "All of us down here are still commenting on how clean the launch and launch count were." The goal of the mission is to deliver Expedition 2 commander Yury Usachev, James Voss and Janet Helms to the station to relieve the lab's first full-time crew, commander William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. Usachev, Voss, Helms and their shuttle crewmates - commander James Wetherbee, pilot James Kelly and spacewalkers Andrew Thomas and Paul Richards - are working today to check out the shuttle's robot arm and to inspect spacesuits that will be used later in the mission. The 50-foot-long robot arm was powered up around 11:30 p.m. for a payload bay survey. The astronauts also plan to prepare Discovery's airlock for docking and extend the docking system's main attachment ring. The astronauts will call it a day at 10:42 a.m. and begin a seven-hour sleep period. Here's the timeline for today: MET REV.EVENT............................SITE...DD/HH:MM...EST........GMT 12.*.RMS PAYLOAD BAY SURVEY.................00/17:35...12:17 AM...05:17 14...CENTERLINE CAMERA MOUNT................00/19:50...02:32 AM...07:32 16...ODS RING EXTENSION/RENDEZVOUS..........00/22:30...05:12 AM...10:12 TOOL CHECKOUT 16.*.ITALIAN SPACE AGENCY VIP EVENT..TDRE...00/23:40...06:22 AM...11:22 17...MISSION STATUS BRIEFING..........JSC...01/00:48...07:30 AM...12:30 18...FLIGHT DAY HIGHLIGHTS............JSC...01/02:18...09:00 AM...14:00 19...CREW REPORT/HIGHLIGHTS REEL......JSC...01/03:18...10:00 AM...15:00 19...ISS/DISCOVERY CREW SLEEP BEGINS........01/04:00...10:42 AM...15:42 20...VIDEO FILE........................HQ...01/05:18...12:00 PM...17:00 21...PAYLOAD CENTER REPORT...........MSFC...01/06:48...01:30 PM...18:30 25...DISCOVERY CREW WAKE UP (begins FD 3)...01/11:00...05:42 PM...22:42 25...RENDEZVOUS OPERATIONS BEGIN............01/12:20...07:02 PM...00:02 25...ISS CREW WAKE UP.......................01/12:30...07:12 PM...00:12 27...TI BURN (time approximate).............01/15:33...10:15 PM...03:15 SATURDAY, MARCH 10 28...DISCOVERY/ISS DOCKING..................01/17:54...12:36 AM...05:36 10:10 a.m., 03/09/01, Update: Discovery closes in on space station Editor's Note... The following story also is posted on the Spaceflight Now web site. The Discovery astronauts successfully checked out two spacesuits today, unlimbered the ship's robot arm, inspected the cargo bay and monitored a waste water dump to make sure such procedures pose no threat to the international space station. Discovery is scheduled to dock with the space station at 12:34 a.m. EST Saturday after a two-day orbital chase. The primary goals of the 103rd shuttle mission are to deliver the station's second full-time crew and some five tons of supplies and equipment. The astronauts carried out a rocket firing late Thursday to fine tune their approach and another, larger "burn" this morning. Today's rocket firing raised the high point, or apogee, of Discovery's orbit from 171 statute miles to 228 miles and boosted the low point, or perigee, from 151 miles to 170 miles. The maneuver will put the shuttle about 46 miles behind the station at crew wakeup this evening. Lead flight director John Shannon said so far, the mission is proceeding in textbook fashion with no technical problems of any significance. And that's a good thing, he said, because "we have three pretty ambitious days from here on out." After docking, the astronauts will begin transferring critical equipment over to the station, including three Soyuz seat liners and spacesuits that will be used by the station's second full-time crew: Commander Yury Usachev, Susan Helms and James Voss. The new crew will move aboard the station in staggered fashion, with Usachev transferring Saturday, replacing Expedition One crewman Yuri Gidzenko. The move will become official when Usachev's seat liner is in place on the station's Soyuz lifeboat. Voss will replace Sergei Krikalev Sunday evening and Helms will replace Expedition One commander William Shepherd later next week. In between spacewalks, the astronauts will attach an Italian-built pressurized cargo carrier to the space station. The Leonardo module, making its first flight, is loaded with five tons of equipment and supplies, including the station's first suite of scientific experiments. It will be attached to the Unity module's downward facing node, unloaded and reberthed in Discovery's cargo bay for return to Earth. Sergio De Julio, president of the Italian Space Agency, called the crew today to congratulate them on a successful launch. "How is our baby, our Italian baby?" he asked. "Very nice, very beautiful outside in the payload bay," said shuttle commander James Wetherbee. "It's sparkling silver, very clean looking of course. You have made a very nice module, a very great spacecraft. "We are looking forward to going inside and working with it and for the first time, we'll be able to outfit the international space station with some experiments." With the station rendezvous proceeding like clockwork, the astronauts spent the day today readying Discovery for docking and checking out the spacesuits Voss and Helms will use overnight Saturday. "What the crew did today is they got out their spacesuits and ran them through all the checks to make sure they were working (and) they were working fine, we have two good spacesuits," Shannon said. "They took out the robotic arm, did a good survey of the payload bay, did a checkout of all its backup systems. That worked out great. "We parked the arm over the forward left side of the payload bay and took a look at a waste dump," he continued. "We did that in order to assure the (space station) program that the waste nozzle is installed correctly and there's no icing or ice formation on it. "When we're docked to the station and do waste dumps, we want to make sure that none of that ends up on the station. That could degrade the solar arrays over time. We looked at all that, it all looked really normal so we'll be clear to do waste dumps while we're docked." The only problems encountered so far involve trouble with a cabin fan used as a supplemental air filter and a quickly-resolved glitch with one of the orbiter's computer displays. The orbiter cabin air cleaner is a portable unit mounted in one of the two hatchways between the shuttle's upper and lower decks. A filter in front of the fan traps lint and other debris that manages to work its way into the air. "We use all that blue Velcro and as you're pulling books and tabs and things off you create a little bit of blue lint and we find that on filters to avionics and things and the cabin air cleaner is a good way to pick up most of that," Shannon said. "I think the biggest impact (of the fan's loss) is it's a good site for the lost and found, he said. "Whenever somebody loses a piece of paper or a card or their glasses or whatever, you can always find it on the (fan) screen because everything eventually ends up there." The fan is not required, but engineers are developing a repair procedure that may recover its use. The astronauts are scheduled to begin a seven-hour sleep period at 10:42 a.m. Wakeup is planned for 5:42 a.m. and if all goes well, Wetherbee and his crewmates will switch to their rendezvous flight plan around 7:12 p.m. At 10:15 p.m., with the shuttle trailing the space station by about 9.2 miles, Wetherbee will carry out a rocket firing to begin the final approach. "The orbiter right now is trailing and it's lower and that, of course, will allow us to catch up," Shannon said. "We'll come up and do the terminal initiation burn and that will phase us in about 400 feet below the station on what's called the r-bar." The R-bar is an imaginary line connecting the space station to the center of the Earth. On the most recent shuttle visit last month, the orbiter proceeded directly up the R-bar to a docking with a port on the Unity module's downward facing, or nadir, hatch. This time around, Discovery will dock instead with a port on the forward end of the Destiny laboratory module, which faces the direction of the station's motion directly ahead along an imaginary line known as the velocity vector, or V-bar. "We're going to dock with PMA-2 on the end of the lab," Shannon said. "So the crew puts in a computer controlled pitch maneuver while they're on the R-bar that rotates the orbiter 90 degrees up at about 0.1 degrees per second. "When they initiate that maneuver, they do a plus-X firing with the translational hand controller that sends them out in front of the station," he said. "Meanwhile, the orbiter is pitching up. As they go out in front, they pick up orbital altitude and it phases them right up onto the V-bar." At that point, Discovery will be oriented with its tail pointing toward Earth and its open cargo bay pointed toward the station and the lab module's PMA-2 docking port. "They 'll translate right down the V-bar from in front of the station," Shannon said. "Jim Wetherbee will keep it within a pretty tight corridor. To prevent hitting the station's delicate solar arrays with the exhaust plumes from the shuttle's braking rockets, Wetherbee will use so-called "low-Z" thrusters that are canted more toward Earth and deep space than the station. A small component of the thrust from the low-Z jets will act to slow the shuttle down. On R-bar approaches from directly below, shuttle pilots enjoy natural braking from Earth's gravity and orbital mechanics. Wetherbee, on the other hand, will have to fire braking pulses as he approaches the station. "The way you do that is you control your approach," Shannon said. "You'll see we don't stop at 170 feet when we're on the V-bar, we'll stop at 30 feet out. Jim will take a real good look ... to make sure he's exactly lined up. "And then from 30 feet in," he said, "we really don't like to do braking pulses because they can plume the station." 10:15 p.m., 03/09/01, Update: Shuttle begins final approach to space station Trailing the international space station by about nine miles, Discovery skipper James Wetherbee and pilot James Kelly carried out a critical rocket firing this evening at 10:13 p.m. to begin the shuttle's final approach. The so-called terminal initiation, or TI, burn was designed to bring the shuttle to a point 400 feet directly below the space station at 11:42 p.m. Wetherbee then will initiate a computer-controlled maneuver to pitch the shuttle's nose up as the ship maneuvers to a point 310 feet directly in front of the station. From there, with Discovery's cargo bay facing the station and its tail facing Earth, Wetherbee will guide the shuttle straight in to a docking at the U.S. Destiny laboratory module's forward port. Docking is targeted for 12:34 a.m. Here is a timeline of this evening's docking activity (in EST and mission elapsed time): TIME.......DD...HH...MM...EVENT 03/09/01 10:07 PM...01...15...25...Orbital noon 10:12 PM...01...15...30...TI rendezvous burn 10:41 PM...01...15...59...Suset 10:42 PM...01...16...00...P6 solar arrays start feathering maneuver 11:12 PM...01...16...30...Sunrise 11:27 PM...01...16...45...P6 arrays feathered 11:29 PM...01...16...47...MC 4 rendezvous burn 11:32 PM...01...16...50...Range: 1,500 feet 11:37 PM...01...16...55...Range: 1,000 feet 11:37 PM...01...16...55...Russian ground station loss of signal 11:39 PM...01...16...57...Shuttle Ku-band antenna to low power 11:42 PM...01...17...00...Noon 11:42 PM...01...17...00...Shuttle 400 feet directly below ISS 11:45 PM...01...17...03...Initiate TORVA pitch up maneuver 11:47 PM...01...17...05...Range: 400 feet 11:51 PM...01...17...09...Russian arrays start feathering 11:55 PM...01...17...13...Range: 300 feet 11:56 PM...01...17...14...Russian arrays feathered 11:56 PM...01...17...14...Shuttle 310 feet directly in front of ISS 11:59 PM...01...17...17...Range: 250 feet 03/10/01 12:03 AM...01...17...21...Range: 200 feet 12:06 AM...01...17...24...Range: 170 feet 12:08 AM...01...17...26...TDRS-West loss of signals of signal 12:08 AM...01...17...26...Range: 150 feet 12:08 AM...01...17...26...TDRS-East acquisition of signal 12:13 AM...01...17...31...Sunset 12:14 AM...01...17...32...Range: 100 feet 12:17 AM...01...17...35...Range: 75 feet 12:20 AM...01...17...38...Range: 50 feet 12:22 AM...01...17...40...Range: 30 feet; start stationkeeping 12:27 AM...01...17...45...End stationkeeping; push to dock 12:31 AM...01...17...49...Range: 10 feet 12:33 AM...01...17...51...DOCKING 12:44 AM...01...18...02...Sunrise 12:56 AM...01...18...14...Russian ground station acquisition of signal 01:02 AM...01...18...20...TDRS-East loss of signal 01:02 AM...01...18...20...TDRS-Z acquisition of signal 01:05 AM...01...18...23...TDRS-Z loss of signal 01:06 AM...01...18...24...TDRS-West acquisition of signal 01:09 AM...01...18...27...Russian ground station loss of signal 01:15 AM...01...18...33...Noon See the next story for a detailed explanation of the rendezvous procedure and post-docking activity. 11:55 p.m., 03/09/01, Update: Flight controllers struggle to lock solar array into place The shuttle Discovery's crew has been told to stay more than 400 feet from the international space station while flight controllers work to get one of the station's two large P6 solar array panels locked in place. The port panel of the P6 solar array is locked down as required, but the status of the starboard wing is unclear. In still video images from the shuttle, both array wings appear to be in the same orientation. Flight controllers plan to back off a locking pin, re-orient the starboard wing slightly and then drive the locking pin back into place. Until the panel is locked down, however, Discovery will stay beyond 400 feet to avoid any chance of hitting the array with rocket exhaust. As of this writing, Discovery is roughly 400 feet directly ahead of the station on the velocity vector. =================================================================== Running late, Discovery docks with international station (03/10/01) 12:05 a.m., 03/10/01, Update: Discovery stands by; solar array fix could take half an hour or more With Discovery in place on the velocity vector directly ahead of the international space station, flight controllers are continuing to assess what to do to lock down the starboard wing of the P6 solar array. It now appears shuttle skipper James Wetherbee will be forced to hold his position for another 30 to 40 minutes before continuing this evening's rendezvous, delaying docking a corresponding amount. Assuming, of course, the array issue gets resolved. 12:40 a.m., 03/10/01, Update: Discovery cleared for docking after solar array locked down Engineers successfully locked down the starboard wing of the space station's P6 solar array and shuttle commander James Wetherbee was cleared to begin final approach for a docking in about 45 minutes. The linkup is now expected around 1:13 a.m. 01:45 a.m., 03/10/01, Update: Discovery docks with international space station Discovery commander James Wetherbee guided the shuttle to a gentle docking with the international space station early this morning after flight controllers successfully latched down a possibly free-swinging solar array. Approaching from directly ahead of the space station at a glacial tenth-of-a-foot per second, Discovery's docking system engaged its counterpart on the front of the Destiny laboratory module at 1:38 a.m. as the two spacecraft sailed 236 miles above the south Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand. "Houston, ISS, we have capture light," shuttle astronaut Andrew Thomas called. "Docking confirmed," said NASA mission control commentator Rob Navias. Docking originally was scheduled for 12:34 a.m., but Wetherbee's final approach was held up while engineers debated what to do about the failure of one of the station's two huge P6 solar arrays to lock in place as required. The P6 array's two wings stretch 240 feet tip to tip and NASA flight rules require both to be feathered edge on to the shuttle and locked in place to prevent structural loads imparted at docking from causing any damage. The port wing (as viewed from the shuttle) locked in place as planned, but flight controllers did not receive indications showing the starboard array was, in fact, latched in position. While Wetherbee stood by, keeping Discovery positioned about 400 feet directly in front of the station, flight controllers sent commands to unlatch and then re-latch the starboard array. The procedure worked and Wetherbee was cleared to begin his final approach. "Discovery, Houston, configure for docking and 'go' for V-bar approach," astronaut Gerhard Thiele radioed from mission control a few minutes past 12:30 a.m. "Copy, configure for docking and go for V-bar approach," pilot James Kelly replied. "And Discovery, Houston, by the way, the arrays are locked. Verified locked," Thiele called. "Copy, Houston, that's good news." With Discovery oriented with its tail pointing toward Earth and its cargo bay facing the station, Wetherbee began inching toward the outpost, moving with deliberate caution to maintain the proper alignment. "You have a great looking ship there, Capt. Shepherd," Wetherbee radioed station skipper William Shepherd as Discovery approached. The primary goal of Discovery's mission is to deliver a fresh crew to the space station - Russian commander Yury Usachev, Susan Helms and James Voss - and to bring the lab's current occupants - Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev - back to Earth after a 140-day stay in space. The major item on the agenda today is to move Usachev's custom seat liner into place inside the station's Soyuz lifeboat spacecraft. Once that task is complete, Usachev will officially replace Gidzenko and become part of Shepherd's crew. From that point forward, Gidzenko will sleep aboard Discovery and Usachev will bunk aboard the station. Voss and Helms will officially move aboard later in the mission, but Shepherd will remain in command until hatches between Discovery and the station are closed prior to undocking March 17. In the near term, Voss and Helms plan to stage a seven-hour spacewalk starting at 11:47 p.m. this evening to install equipment on Destiny's hull needed for attachment of a Canadian-built robot arm during a shuttle flight next month. They also will unplug data and power cables running between the station and a docking port on the Unity module's downward facing hatch. The PMA-3 docking port then will be mounted on Unity's port hatch to clear the way for attachment of a pressurized cargo carrier overnight Sunday. Once unloaded, the Leonardo cargo carrier will be re-berthed in Discovery's cargo bay for return to Earth. 05:50 a.m., 03/10/01, Update: Shuttle skipper saves fuel despite docking delay Despite some 40 minutes of unplanned station keeping before this morning's docking, shuttle commander James Wetherbee managed to save 80 pounds of propellant over what was predicted for a normal rendezvous and docking. Lead flight director John Shannon said the saved propellant will be used to help increase the station's altitude during three planned one-hour reboost sessions later in the flight. Today's docking was delayed because of problems getting one of the P6 solar array's two wings to lock in place before Discovery's final approach. Station flight director Rick La Brode told reporters the problem involved one of two latches on the starboard array's gimbal mechanism (starboard as viewed from the shuttle). Only one such latch is needed and flight controllers elected to use latch No. 2, which had never been used before, for Discovery's docking. The latch motor drew current, La Brode said, but failed to drive closed. Flight controllers then decided to open latch No. 2, move the array slightly and attempt to engage latch No. 1, which has been used in the past. This time, the array locked in place as required and Wetherbee was cleared to begin the final push to docking. Shannon said a 34-minute loss of voice and telemetry from the shuttle shortly after docking apparently was caused by a computer glitch at NASA's White Sands, N.M., satellite control center. The cause of the problem is under investigation. In the meantime, communications from NASA's Tracking and Data Relay satellites is being routed through an alternate channel. 06:45 a.m., 03/10/01, Update: Hatches closed; Usachev joins station crew Hatches between the space station and the shuttle Discovery were closed at 5:54 a.m. to permit the shuttle crew to lower the orbiter's cabin air pressure from 14.7 pounds per square inch to 10.2 psi. This sets the stage for a planned spacewalk late this evening. by astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms. Russian cosmonaut Yury Usachev, meanwhile, is now officially a member of the station's three-person crew, taking the place of Expedition One Soyuz pilot Yuri Gidzenko, who is now considered a member of Discovery's crew. The crew transfer became official with installation of Usachev's custom-fit seat liner in the station's Soyuz lifeboat spacecraft at 5:34 a.m. From this point forward, Usachev will sleep aboard the station while Gidzenko bunks on the shuttle. Usachev is commander of the station's second full-time crew. But he will not take on that role until after Expedition One commander William Shepherd is replaced by astronaut Susan Helms on Wednesday. Usachev's other Expedition Two crewmate, James Voss, will transfer aboard the station Monday. =================================================================== Voss, Helms stage record spacewalk (03/11/01) 12:15 a.m., 03/11/01, Update: Helms and Voss begin spacewalk Floating in the shuttle Discovery's airlock, astronauts Susan Helms and James Voss switched their spacesuits to internal battery power at 12:12 a.m. to officially begin a planned seven-hour spacewalk to continue outfitting the international space station. This is the 101st spacewalk in the history of the U.S. space program, the 17th devoted to space station construction and the 61st in the 20-year history of the space shuttle program. It is the third spacewalk for Voss, whose suit features red stripes, and the first for Helms, wearing an unmarked white spacesuit. Voss and Helms are part of the space station's second full-time crew. Their commander, Russian cosmonaut Yury Usachev, officially transferred to the space station early Saturday, replacing Expedition One crew member Yuri Gidzenko. Voss will join him aboard the station overnight Sunday, replacing Sergei Krikalev, and Helms will move in Wednesday, replacing Expedition One commander William Shepherd. The goal of this morning's spacewalk is to mount an attachment cradle to the Destiny laboratory module that will be used during a shuttle visit next month to anchor the station's Canadian-built robot arm. Helms and Voss also plan to install a so-called rigid umbilical that will route video and data from the robot arm into a computerized work station inside the lab module. The spacewalkers also will disconnect power and data cables running between the station and a shuttle docking port mounted on the Unity module's downward-facing, or nadir, hatch. After putting their tools away, Helms and Voss will float back into Discovery's airlock and hook their suits back up to shuttle power and air. Then they'll simply stand by while astronaut Andrew Thomas, operating the shuttle's robot arm, removes the docking port and mounts it on Unity's port hatch. Once the docking port is in place, Helms and Voss will repressurize Discovery's airlock, officially ending their spacewalk. If Thomas has any problems, however, Voss and Helms can come back out to provide assistance. The docking port, called pressurized mating adapter No. 3 - PMA-3 - is being moved to make way for attachment of an Italian-built pressurized cargo carrier to Unity's nadir port. The Leonardo cargo carrier, loaded with some five tons of equipment and supplies, including the first suite of scientific experiments bound for the station's laboratory module. "We have to move this Pressurized Mating Adapter from one face of the Node, around 90¡ to another face," Thomas said in a NASA interview. "Normally, when we do things like this we have lots of systems that provide the alignment and visual cues to do the mating. "It turns out that, with this particular configuration, we don't have a lot of those cues, so we're going to be using the EVA crew persons potentially to help us with that task. "If it turns out that we can, in fact, do the mating using the on board systems that we have - cameras and so on - then we will mate it. But if that proves not to be accurate enough, we will actually have Jim and Susan on site there, and they will give us verbal commands as to how to guide the PMA and mate it." 01:00 a.m., 03/11/01, Update: Spacewalk off to somewhat rocky start Spacewalkers James Voss and Susan Helms have gotten off to a bit of a rocky start, allowing two items to float free of their restraints. Shortly after the excursion began, a hydrazine detection package managed to float out of the shuttle Discovery's airlock. Voss, working with robot arm operator James Kelly, managed to snag the errant package a few moments later. Then, about a half-hour into the spacewalk, Voss reported a portable attachment device, a tool platform that attaches to the end of the shuttle's robot arm, managed to float free and was lost in space. "The PAD has become disconnected and was untethered and was released into the bay," spacewalker Paul Richards told Houston. "We don't think we can retrieve it. Do we have a spare pad in the node bag?" "Stand by, we're checking.," astronaut Gerhard Thiele replied from mission control. "We're talking to the ground and seeing where the spare PAD is if we have one," Richards said. "So let's just slow down..." As it turned out, a second PAD was stored in a bag of tools lashed to the Unity module's hull so the loss had no immediate impact. Voss then turned his attention to detaching cables between the space station and the PMA-3 docking port on Unity's Earth-facing hatch. To his dismay, he first connector initially refused to come off as expected. "It's not my day apparently, Paul," Voss radioed. "The very first connector, 606, I am unable to release the bale completely. It came about half way and stuck. I'm working on it... I got it! It just took a whole lot of force." The other connectors, while tighter than he expected, also came free as required in preparation for moving the docking module to Unity's port hatch. Despite the work and the initial problems, Voss was clearly enjoying himself. "It's surreal, watching the orbiter float over the ocean," he said at one point as Discovery passed just north of New Zealand. Early, he floated past the Destiny lab module's picture window and paused to look inside. "Tell the station guys I'm at their window," Voss called. "No one's home. Where's my commander, Yury? OK. Going on." 02:30 a.m., 03/11/01, Update: Voss and Helms fall behind struggling with balky connectors Astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms are running about a half-hour behind schedule after encountering problems disconnecting and reconnecting power and data cables running between the space station and the PMA-3 shuttle docking port. Voss was unable to initially reconnect a cable providing power to the common berthing mechanism holding PMA-3 in place. The cable had to be properly connected before the crew could remove PMA-3 and reposition it on another hatch. Finally, after removing an O-ring inside the connector, Voss was able to seat the cable properly. "I did it, it's on!" Voss called. "OK, good work, Jim," Paul Richards called from Discovery's cockpit. "Discovery, Houston, smiling faces down here. Good job," astronaut Gerhard Thiele radioed from mission control. "Yeah, those O-rings didnt' seem to be helping very much," Voss commented. "I guess they serve a purpose. Sure makes it hard to get them on." As it turned out, such O-rings are not needed in space. "Paul, when we encounter another problem with an O-ring, you can remove them," Thiele advised. "They are only used for ground operation." Voss laughed in apparent disbelief. "OK, copy that," Richards replied. "That's a good heads up to keep things flowing, thank you." 03:00 a.m., 03/11/01, Update: PMA-3 ready for repositioning Astronaut Susan Helms took a break from her spacewalk chores this morning to radio a happy birthday to her mother, Dori, who lives in Albuquerque, N.M. "While I have a minute here I just want to say happy birthday to my mother," she said as the shuttle-station complex passed over Europe. "I think she's 68 today. And Mom, I just couldn't think of a better way to spend your birthday. Sorry I'm not with you, though." "I'm sure she'll be happy watching you doing a really good job on this EVA," said Paul Richards from Discovery's flight deck. "It'll make her a very happy and proud mom." "I'm not sure she'd want to be with me right now," Helms replied. Helms and James Voss are preparing to install an equipment cradle on the Destiny module's hull to anchor the space station's robot arm when it arrives next month. They are running about 40 minutes behind schedule at this point. 04:00 a.m., 03/11/01, Update: Spacewalk activity shortened to recover lost time Spacewalkers James Voss and Susan Helms, running about an hour behind schedule will skip one of their planned tasks to get back on schedule for the repositioning of a shuttle docking port called PMA-3. The deferred task - connecting cables in a rigid umbilical that will carry video and data from the station's robot arm after it is installed next month - will be carried out during a spacewalk overnight Monday by Andrew Thomas and Paul Richards. 04:50 a.m., 03/11/01, Update: Lab cradle assembly installed A cradle assembly has been successfully installed on the Destiny module's hull that will anchor the space station's robot arm after it is delivered next month. Susan Helms and James Voss are now pressing ahead with their final major task, installation of a rigid umbilical on Destiny's hull. The rigid umbilical is a sort of cable tray that will carry data and video lines from the robot arm to a workstation inside Destiny. "Oh, my goodness! Take a look at the view," Helms exclaimed as the shuttle-station complex sailed 236 miles above the Middle East. "Yeah, it's really pretty," Voss said. "Oh, my goodness," Helms repeated. "Look at that!" 10:20 a.m., 03/11/01, Update: Astronauts wrap up marathon spacewalk Editor's Note... The following story also is posted on the Spaceflight Now web site. In a marathon spacewalk marked by unexpected glitches and lost hardware, two astronauts mounted critical equipment on the hull of the international space station today. They then stood by in Discovery's cramped airlock for nearly three hours while their crewmates struggled to reposition a shuttle docking port. In the end, all of the major objectives of the spacewalk were met, but it required a "determined" effort by the astronauts and flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. A robot arm work platform somehow was lost in space, work to wire up a cable tray was deferred to a second spacewalk to make up lost time and problems with a computerized TV alignment system delayed re-attachment of the docking port. It took astronaut Andrew Thomas, operating Discovery's robot arm, two tries to finally get the docking port properly aligned and locked in place. But in the end, he was successful, clearing the way for spacewalkers Susan Helms and James Voss to repressurize Discovery's airlock, officially ending the 101st spacewalk in U.S. spaceflight history. While the marathon excursion seemed grueling to reporters, at least, lead flight director John Shannon said "I would not use the word 'grueling' at all. I would say 'deliberate' is the right word for this day." "We knew this one was going to be tough because it was ambitious, it was success oriented," he said. "We had many, many discussions as to whether this day had too much stuff in it and it was right on the edge, I think. "But we decided that hey, if we could get this stuff done we ought to get it done while we were out at vacuum." The spacewalk began at 12:12 a.m. and ended at 9:08 a.m. Official duration was a record eight hours and 56 minutes. The old record of eight hours and 29 minutes was set during a satellite repair mission in May 1992. But the new record, like Roger Maris' home run mark, deserves an asterisk. Shuttle spacewalks are measured from the time the crew switches to internal battery power to the time the airlock is repressurized. But Voss and Helms reconnected their suits to shuttle air and power at 6:55 a.m. after six hours and 43 minutes. While still in vacuum, their spacesuit batteries and oxygen tanks were no longer needed, making comparisons with other shuttle spacewalks somewhat academic. In any case, it was the 17th spacewalk devoted to construction of the international space station and the 61st in the 20-year history of the space shuttle program. U.S. and Russian spacewalkers have now logged 117 hours and 40 minutes building and outfitting the space station. Voss, making his third spacewalk, and Helms, making her first, are part of the space station's second full-time crew. Their commander, Russian cosmonaut Yury Usachev, officially transferred to the space station early Saturday, replacing Expedition One crew member Yuri Gidzenko. Voss will join him aboard the station overnight Sunday, replacing Sergei Krikalev, and Helms will move in Wednesday, replacing Expedition One commander William Shepherd. The goal of this morning's spacewalk, the first of two planned for Discovery's mission, was to mount an attachment cradle and a cable tray to the Destiny laboratory module that will be used during a shuttle visit next month to anchor the station's Canadian-built robot arm. The second objective was for Thomas to reposition a shuttle docking port, moving pressurized mating adapter No. 3 - PMA-3 - from the Unity module's downward-facing, or nadir, hatch to the module's port hatch. The move was required to free up Unity's nadir port for attachment early Monday of a pressurized cargo module loaded with five tons of equipment and supplies, including the lab's first suite of scientific experiments. The first item on the agenda today was for Voss and Helms to disconnect power and data cables running between Unity and PMA-3. And right off the bat, they ran into problems. Moments after Voss floated into the cargo bay, a hydrazine detection package managed to float out of the shuttle Discovery's airlock. Voss, working with robot arm operator James Kelly, managed to snag the errant package a few moments later. "This was an exciting EVA," lead spacewalk planner Kieth Johnson reflected after the fact. "You're always interested when the first thing the crew says when they open up the hatch is 'oops, we lost a few pieces of hardware.'" On his way to the PMA-3 work site, Voss floated past the Destiny lab module's picture window and paused to look inside. "Tell the station guys I'm at their window," Voss called. "No one's home. Where's my commander, Yury? OK. Going on." He then marveled at the view, saying "it's surreal, watching the orbiter float over the ocean." About a half-hour into the spacewalk, Voss reported an attachment device used to help anchor an astronaut to the end of the shuttle's robot arm, managed to float free and was lost in space. "The PAD (portable foot restraint attachment device) has become disconnected and was untethered and was released into the bay," Richards told Houston. "We don't think we can retrieve it. Do we have a spare pad in the node bag?" "Stand by, we're checking.," astronaut Gerhard Thiele replied from mission control. "We're talking to the ground and seeing where the spare PAD is if we have one," Richards said. "So let's just slow down..." As it turned out, a second PAD was stored in a bag of tools lashed to the Unity module's hull so the loss had no immediate impact. Voss then turned his attention to detaching and "dead facing" eight cables between the space station and the PMA-3 docking port on Unity's Earth-facing hatch. To his dismay, the first connector initially refused to come off as expected. "It's not my day apparently, Paul," Voss radioed. "The very first connector, 606, I am unable to release the bale completely. It came about half way and stuck. I'm working on it... I got it! It just took a whole lot of force." The other connectors, while tighter than he expected, also came free as required in preparation for moving the docking module to Unity's port hatch. But Voss had considerable trouble reconnecting a cable providing power to the common berthing mechanism holding PMA-3 in place. The cable had to be properly connected before the crew could remove PMA-3 and reposition it on Unity's port hatch. Finally, after removing an O-ring inside the connector, Voss was able to seat the cable properly. "I did it, it's on!" Voss called. "OK, good work, Jim," Paul Richards called from Discovery's cockpit. "Discovery, Houston, smiling faces down here. Good job," Thiele radioed from mission control. "Yeah, those O-rings didn't' seem to be helping very much," Voss commented. "I guess they serve a purpose. Sure makes it hard to get them on." As it turned out, such O-rings are not needed in space. "Paul, when we encounter another problem with an O-ring, you can remove them," Thiele advised. "They are only used for ground operation." Voss laughed in apparent disbelief. "OK, copy that," Richards replied. "That's a good heads up to keep things flowing, thank you." With PMA-3's electrical disconnection complete, Voss and Helms began work to mount a cradle assembly on the Destiny module's hull that will serve as the mounting point for a pallet carrying the station's robot arm. Along the way, Helms took a break to radio a happy birthday to her mother, Dori, in Albuquerque, N.M. "While I have a minute here I just want to say happy birthday to my mother," she said as the shuttle-station complex passed over Europe. "I think she's 68 today. And Mom, I just couldn't think of a better way to spend your birthday. Sorry I'm not with you, though." "I'm sure she'll be happy watching you doing a really good job on this EVA," said Richards from Discovery's flight deck. "It'll make her a very happy and proud mom." "I'm not sure she'd want to be with me right now," Helms replied. The astronauts had no major problems mounting the cradle assembly, but by that point they were running an hour behind schedule because of work to pull a spare PAD from a station tool bag and the problems encountered with the PMA-3 cable fittings. As a result, the spacewalkers were told to defer connecting wires in the robot arm's cable tray, leaving that task to Thomas and Richards during a spacewalk overnight Monday. "Oh, my goodness! Take a look at the view," Helms exclaimed as the shuttle-station complex sailed 236 miles above the Middle East. "Yeah, it's really pretty," Voss said. "Oh, my goodness," Helms repeated. "Look at that!" Once they were finished with the rigid umbilical, Voss and Helms packed up their tools, returned to Discovery's airlock and hooked their spacesuits up to shuttle power and air. Thomas then used the orbiter's robot arm to move PMA-3 to Unity's port hatch. The spacewalkers stood by in the airlock in case Thomas needed help properly positioning PMA-3 for docking. As it turned out, the attachment process was stretched out due to problems with a computerized television positioning system. After one failed attempt to attach the docking port, a second attempt was made using digital position data from the robot arm. The procedure work, clearing Voss and Helms to finally end their spacewalk. =================================================================== Astronauts mount Leonardo module on station (03/12/01) 11:50 p.m., 03/11/01, Update: Logistics module unberthed; Voss joins station crew Astronaut Andrew Thomas, operating the shuttle Discovery's 50-foot-long robot arm, gently lifted a $150 million Italian-built cargo carrier from the shuttle's cargo bay late this evening for attachment to the international space station. The Leonardo module, loaded with 9,663 of equipment and supplies, was unberthed at 11:10 p.m. and slowly maneuvered into position for attachment to the downward facing port of the multi-hatch Unity module. Hatches leading into the module should be open by 7 a.m. or so. Hatches between Discovery and the space station, closed Saturday in preparation for an overnight spacewalk, were re-opened at 10:15 p.m. Sunday evening. The hatches will be closed again around 5 a.m. in preparation for a second and final spacewalk overnight Monday to install a storage platform on the station's hull and to hook up cables that will carry video and data from the station's robot arm to computer workstations inside the Destiny lab module. The primary goal of the 103rd shuttle mission is to replace the station's first three-man crew, known as Expedition One, with three fresh crew members. Expedition Two commander Yury Usachev moved aboard early Saturday, replacing cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko, who is now considered a member of Discovery's crew. The first item on the agenda Sunday evening was to move a custom seat liner for astronaut James Voss into the station's Soyuz lifeboat. Installation of the seat liner at 11:45 p.m. marked the official transfer of Voss to the space station crew. Astronaut Susan Helms will replace Expedition One commander William Shepherd on Wednesday. Discovery's planned touchdown March 20 will close out a 140-day stay in space for Shepherd and his crewmates. Usachev and company will return to Earth aboard a shuttle in July. Over the next five days, the Discovery and space station crew will unload Leonardo, moving experiment racks, supplies and other equipment into the lab complex. "And some of that equipment's very important," Thomas said in a NASA interview. "For example, we're carrying the robotics workstation for the international space station. This is the system of video monitors, computers and hand controls that will enable operators to actually run the space station robotic arm when it comes up (in April), so it's a very important piece of equipment. "They will be transferring that and doing some checkout of that equipment," he continued. "They'll be transferring a DC-to-DC converter unit that's in one of the racks that will be providing power for the lab module. Obviously, that's a very important thing to have. "There [are] a lot of tools, logistics, water transfer equipment. There's a cycle ergometer exercise system that has to go across and things like that. "So, they're going to be very busy getting all of that equipment across," he said. "And some of it needs to be done fairly promptly because we want them to have it on board for a while and operational so that we can confirm that the equipment we've brought is functional and that it is able to be left there." If all goes well, Leonardo will be undocked from the station March 17 and reberthed in Discovery's cargo bay, loaded with about one ton of trash and no-longer-needed equipment. 01:10 a.m., 03/12/01, Update: Cargo carrier attached to station The Leonardo cargo carrier was attached to the international space station at 1:02 a.m. after being moved into position by robot arm operator Andrew Thomas. "And just one word for Andy: Oustanding!" astronaut Gerhard Thiele radioed from mission control. "Thank you, Gerhard; we aim to please," Thomas replied. The attachment process, from unberthing to station capture, took about two hours to complete. "Everybody on the station side has big smiles on their faces to have the new MPLM up there," Thiele called. "Well good, thank you," commander James Wetherbee replied from Discovery. "The team did a great job up here and down there. Thanks for your help." 06:25 a.m., 03/12/01, Update: Astronauts resolve module activation glitch; spacewalk replanned The space station crew ran into unexpected problems powering up life support systems in the newly attached Leonardo cargo carrier. After troubleshooting, ground controllers told station skipper William Shepherd a critical electrical jumper between the station and the module apparently had not yet been installed. Shepherd quickly confirmed that, saying "if they can get in the database and tell us where to find a jumper, we can fix that fairly quickly." "And we're working that as we speak," replied Stephanie Wilson from the space station control center. "Stand by." A few moments later, Wilson told Shepherd the jumper in question was located inside the Leonardo module. Once the jumper is installed, fans can be activated to prevent pockets of carbon dioxide from building up. "So at this time, you are 'go' to ingress," Wilson said around 6:15 a.m. "Please monitor your symptoms as you do so. And I have a rack and section location for the jumper when you're ready to copy." Shuttle flight planners, meanwhile, have revised the timeline for this evening's spacewalk by astronauts Andrew Thomas and Paul Richards in the wake of a record spacewalk overnight Saturday by James Voss and Susan Helms. Voss and Helms fell behind schedule and were unable to make electrical connections between cables in a cable tray they installed on the Destiny laboratory module's hull. The cables in question will route power, telemetry and video between a workstation in the lab and the station's Canadian-built robot arm, scheduled for installation next month. The cable tray hooks up have been added to the spacewalk by Thomas and Richards, scheduled to get underway at 11:42 p.m. Once the cable work is complete - the job is expected to take about 50 minutes - the spacewalkers will mount an external cargo carrier on Destiny's hull before splitting up to carry out individual tasks. Richards will inspect a non-propulsive valve mounted on Destiny during the last shuttle mission and configure circuit interrupt devices to route power from the P6 solar array to internal lab systems. The valve in question is designed to permit venting without imparting enough force in any direction to affect the station's orientation. Lead station flight director Rick La Brode said today the valve is, in fact, imparting a slight bit of roll to the station. The station's stabilizing gyroscopes easily compensate, but engineers want to find out what might be affecting the operation of the valve. Thomas, meanwhile, will make his way to the top of the P6 solar array truss to inspect the so-called four-bar linkage holding one of its two solar wings in place. During deployment last December, one of four locking pins failed to fully engage. Thomas and Richards were trained to use a come-along type device to crank the linkage toward the fully deployed position in hopes the one stuck locking pin could slip into place. Lead flight director John Shannon said early today that plan has been called off because of an analysis that indicates potential problems when the come-along is released. Instead, Thomas will simply tap on the linkage with a tool to see if that might be enough to coax the pin free. Thomas also plans to inspect the floating potential probe, a device at the top of the P6 truss that measures the electrical environment around the space station. The device has performed intermittently since installation late last year. It was working in recent weeks, until the station's crew powered down the FPP's control computer prior to relocating their Soyuz ferry craft to another port. When they tried to power the system back up, the FPP failed to operate. Thomas will inspect the unit, note the status of diagnostic LEDs and report the same to Houston. The spacewalk is expected to last about six-and-a-half-hours. =================================================================== Thomas and Richards stage smooth outfitting spacewalk (03/13/01) 12:30 a.m., 03/13/01, Update: Spacewalk begins Astronauts Andrew Thomas and Paul Richards, floating in the shuttle Discovery's airlock, switched their spacesuits to internal battery power at 12:23 a.m. to officially begin a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk. This is the 102nd spacewalk in U.S. space history, the 62nd in the 20-year history of the shuttle program and the 18th devoted to assembly and outfitting of the international space station. It is the first such excursion for Thomas and Richards. The primary goals of today's spacewalk are to complete electrical connections in a cable tray mounted on the U.S. lab module Sunday; to attach an open cargo pallet to the station's hull; and to inspect - and possibly fix - a jammed locking pin on the station's main solar array. Thomas and Richards also will mount a spare coolant system pump on the lab's hull and inspect a device at the top of the P6 solar array truss that measures the space station's electrical environment. The device, called the Floating Potential Probe, or FPP, has not been working properly in recent weeks and while the spacewalkers cannot do anything to fix it, they can observe diagnostic LEDs on the unit to shed light on what might be wrong. This is a relatively straight-forward spacewalk, or EVA, as these things go and if all goes well, Thomas and Richards will re-enter Discovery's airlock around 6:30 a.m. Here is an updated timeline of today's activity (spacewalk times are approximate): TIME.......DD...HH...MM...EVENT 03/13/01 12:23 AM...04...17...41...EVA-2: Spacesuits to battery power 12:43 AM...04...18...01...EVA-2: Sortie setep 12:52 AM...04...18...10...STS/ISS: MPLM activation (DDCU) 01:22 AM...04...18...40...Lab carrier assembly checkout 01:23 AM...04...18...41...EVA-2: Storage platform installation 02:23 AM...04...19...41...EVA-2: Thomas installs spare pump 02:23 AM...04...19...41...EVA-2: Richards does preliminary cleanup 02:32 AM...04...19...50...ISS: Crew meal 03:03 AM...04...20...21...EVA-2: Rigid umbilical connections 03:27 AM...04...20...45...Cabin repressurized to 14.7 psi 03:37 AM...04...20...55...ISS: Avionics rack 1 transfer 03:53 AM...04...21...11...EVA-2: P6 solar array linkage inspection 04:27 AM...04...21...45...Gidzenko exercises 04:37 AM...04...21...55...ISS: MSS-1 rack transfer 04:53 AM...04...22...11...EVA-2: Getahead tasks 04:57 AM...04...22...15...Krikalev exercises 05:27 AM...04...22...45...RMS powerdown 05:33 AM...04...22...51...EVA-2: Sortie cleanup 05:37 AM...04...22...55...ISS: MSS-2 rack transfer 06:33 AM...04...23...51...EVA-2: Airlock ingress 06:42 AM...05...00...00...Wetherbee exercises 06:53 AM...05...00...11...EVA-2: Airlock repressurization 06:57 AM...05...00...15...ISS: CHECS rack transfer 06:57 AM...05...00...15...Kelly exercises 07:52 AM...05...01...10...Shepherd exercises 07:57 AM...05...01...15...ISS: Transfer tagup 10:42 AM...05...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins 07:30 a.m., 03/13/01, Update: Astronauts complete smooth spacewalk Sometimes, the best way to free a stuck piece of hardware is to give it a good whack. That's what spacewalker Andrew Thomas did this morning to free a jammed, spring-loaded locking pin at the base of a strut holding one of the international space station's two huge solar wings in place. Three of four such pins in the so-called "four-bar linkage" supporting the port-side solar wing engaged properly when the wing was deployed in December. But the fourth refused to lock. Early today, working nine stories above the shuttle Discovery's cargo bay, Thomas tapped the brace with a hand tool and to the delight of flight controllers, the pin suddenly snapped into position. "Yep, that tap worked," fellow spacewalker Paul Richards observed. "That's it," Thomas agreed. "It's in, isn't it?" "It looks like it. Let me look at it from this side." "The pin is in. I got it," Thomas said. "You got it, Andy. Great job!" It was a fitting conclusion to a very deliberate, carefully conducted spacewalk, the 102nd such excursion in U.S. space history, the 62nd in the history of the shuttle program and the 18th devoted to space station assembly. During a marathon spacewalk overnight Saturday by station astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms, a critical robot arm attachment fitting was lost in space when it somehow slipped away from Voss. Thomas and Richards, both spacewalk rookies, took elaborate care today to keep up with all their tools and hardware and in the end logged a near perfect six-hour and 21-minute excursion. Eighteen U.S. and Russian astronauts have now logged 124 hours building and equipping the station. "Wow!" Richards marveled as he floated into the shuttle's cargo bay. "My first sight is a very beautiful sunrise." "Speaking of which, make sure your visors are down," Helms reminded. Taking a strictly business approach, the spacewalkers seldom commented on anything other than the work at hand. But Thomas, a native of Adelaide, Australia, took a brief moment to enjoy a view of his hometown as it raced by 236 miles below. "It's an amazing view up here," he said. "I'm passing over south Australia and I can see the coastline, my hometown, all very clearly. Quite extraordinary." After attaching a cargo storage platform to the Destiny module's hull, the astronauts attached a spare cooling system pump and hooked up cables that will route data and video into the lab from the station's robot arm. The Canadian-built arm is scheduled for attachment during a shuttle flight next month. "Nice work, guys," Helms radioed when the work was complete. "You guys are just doing great. This has been fabulous." The spacewalkers then made their way to the top of the P6 solar array truss to tap on the jammed four-bar linkage. While at the top of the P6 solar array, the spacewalkers also inspected status lights on a device designed to measure the electrical environment around the space station. The Floating Potential Probe, or FPP, has worked intermittently since installation late last year. It was working late last month when the space station's crew briefly left the outpost to move their Soyuz lifeboat to a different docking port. When they re-entered the station and powered up its computers, the FPP refused to operate. Thomas and Richards inspected the device first hand today, looking for signs of life from three LEDs on a front panel. Blinking LEDs would have indicated normal operation. "I see three LEDs, no lights. See 'em?" Richards asked his crewmate. "OP, understand no light," astronaut Susan Helms called from Discovery's flight deck.. "No lights," Thomas said. "Well then I guess they're not blinking," Helms said. "Thank you very much." The FPP was mounted on the station last year to measure the effectiveness of two other devices, called plasma contactors, that release xenon atoms into space to electrically ground the station. The concern was that potentially dangers charges could build up, posing a risk to spacewalkers. Earlier data from the FPP showed the risk was minimal with both plasma contactors operating and the station's main solar arrays oriented edge on to the direction of travel. Engineers would like to operate the arrays normally during spacewalks, allowing them to track the sun, but more data is needed to fully understand the electrical environment. It is not yet known what might be needed to restore the FPP to operation. "And Houston, Discovery, I suppose you heard, but we had a successful task for the four-bar linkage pin," Helms reported. "Yes, we copy that Susan, that is absolutely outstanding work," astronaut Shannon Lucid replied from mission control. "And none of the FPP status lights are on, Shannon." "OK, we copy, no status lights on the FPP." A few moments later, Thomas and Richards began making their way back down the P6 truss toward Discovery's airlock. "Well Andy, we were on top of the world there," Richards said. "We were for a while, yeah," said Thomas. The excursion began at 12:23 a.m. and officially ended at 6:44 a.m. when the astronauts began repressurizing Discovery's airlock. "You all did an outstanding job," Lucid radioed. "Thanks a lot," Richards replied. "It takes a team effort and we had a lot of good people on the team." The repressurization process was interrupted briefly and the airlock taken back to vacuum to complete an engineering test in which the shuttle's primary jets were fired to determine their effect on the combined shuttle-station "stack." Even though the airlock was depressurized, the official end of the spacewalk was 6:44 a.m. =================================================================== Helms moves aboard station; completes crew rotation (03/14/01) Astronaut Susan Helms officially moved from the shuttle Discovery to the international space station today, completing a staggered crew rotation that began Saturday with the transfer of Russian commander Yury Usachev. Helms, Usachev and James Voss have now officially replaced the station's first full-time crew, commander William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, who will complete a 140-day stay in space when Discovery lands March 20. "Tonight, at 12 o'clock Houston time, we passed a really significant milestone with the completion of the first crew rotation in ISS history," said lead flight director John Shannon. "It was a time we have all looked forward to for the past couple of years with great anticipation because we are passing from the time where Expedition One did construction and, as Bill Shepherd called it, the skakedown cruise part of the initial ISS construction, to Expedition Two, which is when we make it more of an orbiting laboratory." While the Expedition One crew is now sleeping aboard the space shuttle, Shepherd will remain in formal command of the station until hatches between the two vehicles are sealed just before undocking late Saturday. At the moment of hatch closure, the Expedition Two crew's tenure will officially begin. "Expedition Two will start next Saturday when Bill Shepherd officially hands over to Yuri Usachev," Shannon said. "That will be with the hatch closure Saturday night. "So the torch is passing as we speak today from one crew to the next as well as the phase of flight for the international space station, as we go from construction to utilization." For their part, the Expedition Two crew members are clearly looking forward to the experience. "I think we've become family and learned how to anticipate each other during our four years of training together," Voss said early today. "We've spent a great deal of time both in Russia and in the United States. Susan and I even stayed in the same cottage while we lived in Russia. "We have learned to anticipate, work together. ... We just seem to mesh together very well and I expect for us to get along greatly during the four-and-a-half months we'll be up here and get a lot of work done." Helms agreed, saying the station's sheer size will make the stay enjoyable. "By comparison to the shuttle, the space station is beyond spacious and I don't think Jim, Yury and I are going to have any trouble moving from the close quarters of the shuttle over to the huge space station," she said. "We are just going to have the time of our lives." But spending four months in isolation aboard the space station will still pose psychological challenges. "We're going to be in an isolated environment for many months and I expect there to be probably some predicted psychological effects, which involve maybe some highs and lows relative to being isolated for so long away from friends and family," she told a reporter early today. "However, I've been mentally preparing myself for that and I feel like that's not going to impact getting the work done ... and the spaceflight will be terrific." The astronauts are ahead of schedule unloading five tons of supplies and equipment from the Leonardo cargo module carried up aboard Discovery. Over the next few days, the combined crews will complete the unloading process and move some 1,600 pounds of trash and discarded supplies and equipment from the station to the shuttle for return to Earth. At the same time, Shepherd's crew will spend as much time as possible briefing Usachev and company on space station operations. So far, Shannon said, "it has gone better than I had ever hoped." "And I would attribute that 100 percent to the training the crews got both in Russia and the United States," he said. "We've spent a lot of time preparing for this mission. The Expedition Two folks spent over four years training for this mission and clearly Bill Shepherd and his Expedition One guys spent a tremendous amount of time ... getting the station ready to go, packing up things and thinking about how they were going to do the rotation." Station flight director Rick La Brode said the new crew will have to hit the deck running to prepare the station for installation of a complex Canadian-built robot arm next month. The arm is critical for subsequent construction missions and the Expedition Two crew is charged with activating and checking out the computer work station needed to operate the space crane. "As soon as the shuttle undocks, they're going to have a couple of days off for well earned rest," La Brode said. "But then they start activating the systems we're going to be using to support payload operations. "So the time period between (Discovery's departure and the next shuttle's arrival) is going to be dedicated towards really gearing up for payload operations and also getting ready to support the station arm. So it is different, it's not a shakedown." =================================================================== Mission extended one day for cargo transfer work (03/15/01) 06:00 a.m., 03/15/01, Update: Cargo module unloaded; repacking begins The Discovery astronauts spent the day loading the Leonardo cargo module with trash and discarded equipment from the international space station while the lab's departing crew members briefed their replacements on the finer points of operating the growing outpost. Completing this handover process is critical, flight controllers say, to make sure Expedition Two commander Yury Usachev, James Voss and Susan Helms are up to speed on the station's complexities and idiosyncracies before Discovery departs Saturday. "Right now, the best way to describe them is up to their necks in trying to figure out exactly how Alpha works and trying to get as much of the handover done as possible," said shuttle pilot James Kelly. "They're right now trying to learn the ropes of the international space station from the Expedition One crew. They are zooming back and forth trying to figure out everything that goes on." At the same time, Kelly and his three shuttle crewmates are racing the clock to repack the Leonardo cargo module with trash and discarded equipment that's no longer needed on the station. Some 9,650 pounds of equipment and supplies carried into orbit inside the module have now been transferred into the space station, including the first suite of science experiments, computer work stations for operating the lab's robot arm, a compact medical facility and components of the station's Ku-band communications system. "We are working on the Leonardo, repacking that to go back in the Discovery's payload bay and bring it back home," Kelly said. "And once that's done, we'll round up the seven of us that are coming home, which is the four of us that went up and the three from the Expedition One crew, and we'll do an undock and hopefully a fly-around." "We're bringing back a whole bunch of logistics and supplies that are no longer necessary and frankly, a lot of trash and things like that that we want to clear out of station. "Obviously, when new things come up, there's packaging materials, foam and bags and all those kind of things, which we don't want to leave inside the station cluttering it up," he said. NASA flight controllers say the mission is proceeding on schedule with no problems of any significance. "We had 10 astronauts working really hard today," said lead flight director John Shannon. "The Expedition One/Expedition Two crew members are spending most of their time right now doing handover tasks. "The Expedition One team is working very hard teaching the Expedition Two team all they need to know about the workings of space station Alpha. "The four shuttle crew members that are left have spent most of their time doing transfers from the Leonardo module," Shannon said. "They got it all unpacked and they're working very hard on the return stowage." Before the astronauts went to bed Wednesday morning, they carried out a reboost maneuver ahead of schedule after radar tracking indicated a possibly close encounter with a work platform attachment device lost during a weekend spacewalk by Voss and Helms. Shannon said today that as it turned out, the tracking forecast was in error and the lost hardware would not have come close enough to Discovery to pose a threat. As it now stands, the lost hardware is more than 20 miles from the shuttle and continuing to separate. Shannon said he was struck by how large the international space station has become and how much volume is available in Leonardo to carry equipment up and down. "It really brings home the fact that this is the largest space station ever put in Earth orbit," he said. "And if you saw (Expedition One commander) Bill Shepherd's video of him translating through the lab, the node and into Leonardo, you get an idea of how immense this is. "Also, how much stowage we can put in Leonardo. It's very impressive, but it's quite a daunting task over the next couple of days to get all the stowage put back in Leonardo. But we're sure happy we have that capability." If all goes well, the Italian-built cargo module will be detached from the space station early Saturday and reberthed in Discovery's cargo bay. The shuttle is scheduled to undock from he station around 10:54 p.m. Saturday evening. 07:10 p.m., 03/15/01, Update: Shuttle mission extended one day. NASA managers today decided to extend the shuttle Discovery's mission by one day to give the crew more time to pack up discarded space station equipment and trash for return to Earth. The decision was radioed up to the astronauts just after crew wakeup at 6:42 p.m. "Looking at the stowage data on the ground, we've got every confidence you could get the stowage done," astronaut Cady Coleman told the crew. "But we've actually got quite a lot of analysis to do down here on the ground. Even with the changes coming today, we know you could finish, but we need a little more time. "As a result, the MMT (mission management team) has formally decided to extend the mission one more docked day." "OK, we copy that," replied commander James Wetherbee. Discovery had been scheduled to undock Saturday night for a landing early Tuesday at the Kennedy Space Center. Undocking now will slip to Sunday evening for a touchdown around 12:59 a.m. on Wednesday, March 21. The astronauts were informed about the possibility of a mission extension shortly before they went to bed earlier today. While they had no problems transferring nearly five tons of equipment and supplies from the Leonardo cargo carrier to the space station, work to load about a ton of trash and no-longer-needed equipment was taking longer than planned. A new television schedule and a revised flight plan will be posted here as soon as possible. =================================================================== Station crew looks forward to homecoming (03/16/01) 02:25 a.m., 03/16/01, Update: NASA revises flight plan for extended mission The flight plan for shuttle Discovery's now-extended mission has been updated by flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Here are the highlights: TIME.......DD...HH...MM...EVENT 03/18/01 01:42 AM...09...19...00...Leonardo cargo module detached from ISS 02:17 AM...09...19...35...Leonardo berthed in shuttle payload bay 11:30 PM...10...16...48...Shuttle undocks from ISS 03/19/01 12:57 AM...10...18...15...Video playback of undocking 03/20/01 04:42 PM...12...10...00...Crew wakeup 11:51 PM...12...17...09...Deorbit ignition on orbit 200 03/21/01 12:55 AM...12...18...13...Landing on orbit 201 A more detailed version of this flight plan is posted on the Current Mission page. 05:50 a.m., 03/16/01, Update: Station crew looks forward to homecoming Editor's Note... The following story also is posted on the Spaceflight Now web site. The first commander of the international space station says he's not looking forward to returning to Earth's gravity after 141 days in space. But he's proud of his crew's work to activate the outpost and looking forward to seeing his wife and his two dogs again. "We basically put the space station in commission," commander William Shepherd told reporters today. "We have taken something that was an uninhabited outpost and we now have a fully functional station where the next crew can do research. And I think that's the substance of our mission." Shepherd and Mir veterans Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev were launched to the international space station Oct. 31 aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, becoming the lab's first full-time crew. They have been replaced by Expedition Two commander Yury Usachev, James Voss and Susan Helms, who took off aboard the shuttle Discovery on Feb. 8. Asked if he was looking forward to returning to Earth's gravity, Shepherd said "to be honest, I'm not that anxious to see what it's going to be like." "Sergei and Yuri have done this before and they're telling me it's going to be arduous," Shepherd said. "I know my wife is going to be anxious to see me and I'll be happy to get home on time if Captain (James) Wetherbee and the Discovery crew can arrange that." Asked what he looked forward to the most, the former Navy SEAL commando said "the first thing I plan on doing when I get back to Earth is say 'hi' to my wife and playing with my two dogs." Gidzenko agreed, saying "I'm going to meet with my family, my wife and my son, and maybe a little bit later I'm going to take a shower." Along with delivering the station's second crew, Discovery also carried some five tons of supplies and equipment to the complex, including the first suite of scientific experiments and the computer workstations needed to operate the station's robot arm after it is attached next month. Unloading the Italian-built Leonardo cargo carrier went faster than expected, but the astronauts - and engineers on the ground - ran into problems while reloading it with a ton of trash and discarded equipment. Lead flight director John Shannon said it's not enough to simply get the hardware and trash into Leonardo. A detailed inventory must be maintained so engineers on the ground can consider how much each item weighs, where it is located and how it might affect the shuttle's overall balance. As a result, NASA managers decided Thursday to extend the flight by one day to give the astronauts and engineers more time to complete the complex stowage work. "In zero G, things float away, you can't set it beside you and stack it up," said lead flight director John Shannon. "The other part of it is, you can't accurately assess the weight in zero G. "So on the ground, we have to keep a real close tally on what's going in each box and each bag, add up the weights and then do our structural assessment to make sure that bag, when we hit Earth's gravity, is not going to weigh so much it will hurt that bag or the platform that we strap it to." As it now stands, the Leonardo module will be undocked from the station and re-berthed in Discovery's cargo bay overnight Saturday and the shuttle will undock around 11:30 p.m. Sunday. Landing back at the Kennedy Space Center is targeted for 12:55 a.m. Wednesday. Before Discovery departs, however, the Expedition One crew must thoroughly brief Usachev and his crewmates on the station's operation and idiosyncracies. "The top several items we're discussing are how the crew and the vehicle need to be organized for all kinds of contingencies and probably," Shepherd said. "From the aspect of controlling the ship, how we work with computers and communications. Those are the major areas we've covered so far and our discussions are ongoing today and tomorrow." For her part, Helms said she and her crewmates "have a lot of catch up to do in order to figure out where everything is." "These guys have had months to get organized and they've done an outstanding job of putting things where they belong," she said. "So Jim, Yury and I need to get up on the step and try to figure out where all this stuff is so that once these guys leave in a day or two, we're going to be able to find what we need to continue to work," she said. "They've set an example and it's going to be a struggle to try to match it." While she's only be aboard the station for one day, her impressions "have been nothing but favorable and we owe a lot of that to the condition of the ship based on how Expedition One left it." "It's much more spacious than I had imagined," she said. "I expected to have just a couple of things that would be unexpectedly negative but it's turned out everything has been absolutely positive and I just can't believe how much room we're going to have to spread out here and get to work." Voss said he's looking forward to spending four-and-a-half months aboard the outpost. "That is a long time to be away from home no matter where you are, if you're just on a business trip or you're in space," he said. "But I'm looking forward to the work we're going to be doing up here. "We're going to be activating some more systems on the station, there'll be several shuttle flights and a Soyuz flight that will come up here. "We have a lot of work to do and I like working, so I'm just anxious to get started and greatly looking forward to it," he said. "I'm hoping it's going to be a great four-and-a-half months for Susan, Yury and myself." Back on Earth, meanwhile, Shepherd, Gidzenko and Krikalev will be working through extensive physical therapy to re-adapt to gravity. Shepherd said he would like to fly in space again, but not necessarily on the international space station. "I've been wrestling with that question a lot," said. "I do think I would like to fly again in space but I'd like to do it on a vehicle that's going to go somewhere. "I think we should be making plans to have vehicles built somewhat along the lines of this station but that have another destination away from the Earth in mind." =================================================================== Mir veterans lament station's passing (03/17/01) Editor's Note... The following story also is posted on the Spaceflight Now web site. It's too soon to say how history will remember the doomed Mir space station. But astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the international space station said today the sprawling new complex would have been impossible to build and operate without Mir's trailblazing 15 years in space. "We developed invaluable techniques on Mir, we gained experience, we gained, for example, experience in docking to the station, orbiter dockings, both (mission control centers) in Moscow and in Houston learned to work together," said Sergei Krikalev, wrapping up a 141-day stay in space. "All this joint experience now finds its use in the ISS, including the experience that we gained working on Mir. Even when we unpack here on the station and unstow a lot of cargo, we use the techniques we developed on Mir." Mir currently is expected to end its illustrious career with a flaming plunge back to Earth on March 22. Five of the 10 astronauts and cosmonauts currently aboard the international space station visited Mir during earlier missions and they unanimously lament its passing. "I feel that I left a part of myself on the station," said Yury Usachev, commander of the new station's second crew. "But we have moved on and we're working with a new station now. "I think some time needs to pass to be able to give a good estimate of the results of the work of Mir and our work on the station. After some time, we'll be able to fully appreciate Mir. I think it deserves appreciation." The combined shuttle-station crews worked overnight Friday and today to complete stowing about a ton of discarded equipment and trash in an Italian-built cargo module for return to Earth. If all goes well, astronaut Andrew Thomas, operating Discovery's 50-foot-long robot arm, will detach the Leonardo cargo module from the station at 12:52 a.m. Sunday and remount it in the orbiter's cargo bay about an hour later to complete the final major objective of the 103rd shuttle mission. Discovery is scheduled to undock from the station at 11:32 p.m. Sunday and land back at the Kennedy Space Center around 12:55 a.m. Wednesday. On board will be the space station's first full-time crew: Commander William Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko. "I have a feeling that we have completed a very important task, we have done a good job," Krikalev said today. "We started training in 1996 and we concentrated all our efforts on preparing for this flight. Now this flight is almost over and in a way, it makes me sad because this is a stage in our lives that has been completed. "However, our work was good, we were able to work here without any disasters, there haven't been any serious problems on the ISS and I'm sure the program will continue developing." Thomas, who spent nearly five months aboard Mir in 1998, told a reporter today the old station's demise is "kind of sad, it's the passing of a veteran spacecraft." "Mir suffered a lot of problems, but it was nonetheless remarkably successful and it was a great technical triumph and a great achievement," Thomas said. "I was very priviledged to serve on it and I look back on it with great fondness. "I'm going to be sorry that Mir is being deorbited, but that is, of course, the inevitable consequence of progress," he said. "Because of the lessons learned on Mir, we now have this vehicle here. So we've gained a lot from that Mir experience, but I will be sorry to see it go nonetheless." Thomas was the seventh and final NASA astronaut to make a long-duration visit to Mir, giving him a somewhat unique perspective on the Russian station and the new international outpost. "I had the priviledge to live on the Mir space station for several months a few years back and it had a quite a bit of room, too," he said. "In fact, in terms of physical volume, it was probably comparable to what we have here. "But these modules here are quite a bit wider than I had on Mir, we have a lot more space and headroom, as you can plainly see. And after being in the shuttle, it's quite a change to come into this area and have the freedom to move around that we have in here. It's been kind of a kick, actually, to be able to float. "And, you know, we can do things like this," he said, flipping upside down, "and have a lot of fun with it." Said Richards of his first impression of the new station: "It's akin to having a long car trip and then finally stopping at a hotel and being able to stretch out and stretch your legs, but this time in all directions." For his part, Usachev said he was amazed at the uncluttered volume of the new station in its early stages of construction. "It is sort of atypical of what we're used to, size wise," he told a Russian reporter today. "Here, we can float around, we can see how much space there is here. When we first docked and entered the space station, i was amazed to see how long the station is because of the modules that are docked together. You feel different with so much space. "As far as the Russian segment is concerned, we're a little bit more familiar with it. It's not much different from Mir. However, the American segment is very different from what we're used to. We're looking forward to the (Discovery) crew leaving and starting working on our own." Departing Soyuz pilot Gidzenko said Mir's demise is "a pitty ... but nothing lasts forever and I think it is true about Mir as well." "The fact that the station has to be deorbited is not something that we can decide," he said of the on-board crews. "But of course, it is our home and we're losing it at this time." Television images from Mir during its final years showed a very cluttered spacecraft, with equipment lashed to every available bit of wall space and forests of electrical cables and air ducts running between modules like thick vines. The new station, in contrast, appears much roomier in large part because that ducting is not so prevelent and the shuttle has the capability to bring discarded items back to Earth, a capability far beyond that of Russia's much smaller Soyuz ferry craft. "Mir, of course, when I got there was 15 years old and it had 15 years of equipment and miscellaneous junk, basically, stored in it still because there was not much down-mass capability," Thomas said. "So that contributed to that sense of confinement and there wasn't that much room. "But here, of course, by comparison it's very spacious. Because we have the shuttle, we can take goods to and from (the station) and keep that sense of spaciousness, we won't accumulate equipment up here the way they did on Mir. "This module we're in right now is about the size of a bus, it's very spacious, it has racks of equipment down each side, it's going to be an interesting place to do scientific investigations," he said. "There's no doubt about that. It's really a very novel approach to doing science that's going to have an impact in future years." Asked to summarize Discovery's current mission, Thomas said "this has been an amazingly productive flight." "I think it's a very historical flight in the sense that we're bringing up the first exchange crew to the international space station, we're bringing the first crew home, who basically commissioned and outfitted the space station from its inception, we're bringing them back to Earth and leaving a new crew in residence to take their place. "We brought up hardware to support the continued assembly and operations of the space station, we brought up supplies and equipment for the next crew, so it's really been a very productive and action-packed flight and we've gotten a lot out of it." =================================================================== Leonardo returned to shuttle's cargo bay (03/18/01) Editor's Note... The following story also is posted on the Spaceflight Now web site. Concern about possibly corrupted software in the shuttle Discovery's critical flight computers triggered an intensive engineering analysis Saturday and consideration of an unprecedented in-flight software reload. In the end, troubleshooters concluded the shuttle's four general purpose computers, or GPCs, were healthy and that there was no need to order any such electronic brain surgery on a vehicle operating in the hostile environment of space. The astronauts then pressed ahead with work to close up the Italian-built Leonardo cargo module so it could be detached from the international space station's Unity module and remounted in Discovery's payload bay for return to Earth. Already running behind schedule because of the computer troubleshooting, the astronauts ran into fresh problems early today with leaky fittings in hoses used to verify pressure integrity after the hatches are closed and the vestibule between the modules is dropped to vacuum. The fittings in question were tightened and the crew did a second vestibule depressurization. While a bit of leakage remained, engineers were confident it was limited to the pressure testing system and that the seals were, in fact, tight. "Although the hosing itself showed some leakage, we were comfortable that we had a good seal so we went ahead and gave the shuttle crew a go to start unberthing (Leonardo)," said station flight director Rick La Brode. When all was said and done, the crew was running some five hours behind schedule when astronaut Andrew Thomas, operating Discovery's robot arm, finally detached Leonardo from the space station. He then mounted the module in the shuttle's cargo bay for return to Earth without incident, setting the stage for Discovery's undocking at 11:32 p.m. EST tonight. Loaded with nearly five tons of equipment and supplies, Leonardo was launched to the station aboard Discovery and attached the Unity module's downward facing port last Monday. Work to unload the cargo carrier went smoothly, but it took longer than expected to repack it with about one ton of station trash, dirty clothes, computer disks, discarded equipment and other items. As a result, Discovery's mission was extended one day to give the crew more time. Despite the delays getting Leonardo back into Discovery's cargo bay today, lead flight director John Shannon said the crew was able to complete preliminary undocking preparations overnight as planned. "Right now, we anticipate they'll get to bed on time and we'll do the undocking as planned," Shannon said. The computer issue caught flight controllers - and the crew - by surprise. Given the critical nature of the system - the four GPCs control all aspects of shuttle operation - mission managers left no stone unturned to verify their health. The shuttle is equipped with four general purpose computers that run identical software. The computers "vote" on critical operations to provide multiple levels of redundancy. A fifth backup computer also is on board, this one loaded with software written by a different vendor in case of a common bug that might sideline all four GPCs. Discovery's problem developed Saturday morning, before the crew went to bed, when flight controllers noticed lower-than-desireable temperatures in a Freon coolant loop. At the time, the shuttle's avionics system was in a so-called "group B powerdown" to conserve electricity. To generate a bit of additional heat for the overly cold Freon loop, the astronauts were asked to power up GPCs 2 and 4, which were in a sort of standby mode as part of the group B powerdown. On power up, the computers download software and timing information from the GPCs that are alrady operating to ensure all the machines are properly synchronized. The normal procedure is to activate dormant computers at least 10 seconds apart to make sure they don't attempt to access and download data from the operating computers at the same time. In that case, data can become corrupted. But it appears the crew reactivated GPCs 2 and 4 within about six seconds of each other and engineers spent the day evaluating the flight computers and their software to determine what, if anything, might need to be done. Shannon blamed the glitch on flight controllers, saying the crew was not advised to wait 10 seconds between powering up GPCs 2 and 4. "The ground called to turn those two GPCs on and they did not reference any procedure," he said. "If they had, the 10-second warning would have been in there. The crew did exactly what the ground told them and when we went back and looked we said, ah, we should have given them the warning to wait 10 seconds." Engineers were initially concerned they might have to order the crew to reload the software in all four general purpose computers from scratch using the backup flight system, or BFS, computer. While there have been computer problems in the past, no crew in the 20-year, 103-flight history of the shuttle program has ever had to reload the main flight control software during a mission. As it turned out, an engineering review determined that the GPCs can be started up within five seconds of each other without causing any problems. The 10-second rule was intended to provide a bit of margin. After meeting for more than an hour Saturday night to assess engineering data, NASA's mission management team ordered a special test of the computers to provide additional insight into their condition. The crew was asked to switch the GPCs to a different operating mode - OPS-8 flight control system checkout software - and then back again to OPS-2 software, the computer programs that control normal operations in orbit. If the computers were healthy, the thinking went, the machines would shift between modes without any problems. And to the relief of the data processing system officer in mission control, that's exactly what they did. "Houston, Discovery, we show ourselves complete," commander James Wetherbee radioed around 11:30 p.m. "Thank you very much for all the analysis and the work overnight and to the MMT also and thanks to Terry for watching over our shoulders. Appreciate it." "And Discovery, Houston, congratulations on a super job of recovering the GPCs," astronaut Gerhard Thiele replied from mission control. "We have full confidence that things will work from now on. For the big picture for the rest of today, we're looking to the station side of the hatch to get ready for MPLM demate and putting it back into the cargo bay." =================================================================== Discovery undocks from space station (03/19/01) 12:10 a.m., 03/19/01, Update: Shuttle Discovery undocks from space station Alpha Editor's Note... The following story also is posted on the Spaceflight Now web site. The international space station's first commander formally turned the ship over to his replacement Sunday night, wishing the lab's second three-person crew good luck aboard the orbital outpost and urging them to "sail her well" during their four-and-a-half-month stay. Four hours later, at 0432 GMT (11:32 p.m. EST), the shuttle Discovery undocked from the space station, pulling smoothly away after an eight-day 21-hour and 54-minute linkup to deliver nearly five tons of supplies and equipment and to pick up about a ton of trash and discarded equipment. More important, Discovery delivered the station's second full-time crew - Expedition Two commander Yury Usachev, James Voss and Susan Helms - and picked up the three men they replaced: Expedition One commander William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. Discovery's touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center early Wednesday will mark the end of a 141-day stay in space Shepherd and his crewmates, who were launched to the station complex on Oct. 31 aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. A team of U.S. and Russian flight surgeons will be standing by to help the station crew members off the shuttle and to begin the long process of rehabilitation to help them re-adapt to the unfamiliar tug of Earth's gravity. "While we consider this crew to be the best conditioned and the best exercised crew that has flown a long-duration mission, what they have to look forward to is a period of several weeks and months of rest and rehabilitation," flight surgeon Terry Taddeo said early Monday. Exercise will start almost immediately in a phased approach designed to "gradually let the crew regain their strength and their conditioning and be able to return to the activities of daily living," Taddeo said. All three station crew members will fly back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston the day after landing. Krikalev and Gidzenko will return to Russia about eight days later while Shepherd will continue his rehabilitation at his home in Houston. Usachev formally took over as commander of space station Alpha at 0232 GMT (9:32 p.m. EST) Sunday when hatches between Discovery and the station were closed for the last time. Hatch closing marked the official start of the Expedition Two crew's stay aboard the station. Earlier in the evening, Shepherd, a former Navy SEAL commando and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, presided over a formal change-of-command ceremony in the U.S. laboratory module Destiny. Live television from the station showed the Expedition Two crew lined up along one wall of the lab, Shepherd and his crewmates facing them along the other wall and Discovery's crew - commander James Wetherbee, pilot James Kelly, Andrew Thomas and Paul Richards - floating in the middle. "Houston, the first expedition crew is present and accounted for," Shepherd radioed around 7:30 p.m. "Change of command is an ancient naval tradition: The passage of responsibility for mission, welfare of crew and integrity of vessel from one individual to another. "Space station Alpha has been commissioned in orbit, the service module has been activated, the power element and laboratory module have been brought aboard. A successful resupply mission with Discovery and her crew is complete. Station is at normal condition, all systems functional and ready to carry out operations. "We are on a true space ship now, making our way above any earthly boundaries," he continued. "We are not the first crew to board Alpha nor the last to depart. "But we have made Alpha come alive. We gave her a name and put substance to the idea that our crews can work together as equals and our countries as partners, that we may proceed with bolder and more enterprising voyages in space with benefits from our differences and with a stronger purpose in our common goals." To Usachev, Shepherd said: "We pass to your care Alpha's log with the hope that many successful entries here are recorded, that explorations are prodigious and discoveries wondrous. May the good will, spirit and sense of mission we have enjoyed on board endure. Sail her well. I am ready to be relieved." "And I relieve you," Usachev said, speaking in English. "Congratulations on the successful completion of your flight on ISS. Thanks again how station is in a good condition. And we take the station from your hands into our hands, our minds and our hearts." Wetherbee then spoke, congratulating both crews, along with U.S. and Russian engineers and flight controllers on the ground. "While aboard, we took great care of the systems, for this is not our ship," he said. "We merely sail on it. This ship belongs to the people of Earth. "For Captain Shepherd and his crew, we hold you in admiration as we prepare to bring you home," Wetherbee said. "This has been an arduous duty for you. This ship was not built in a safe harbor, it was built on the high seas. As we sail for home on Discovery, we leave Expedition Two behind to carry on their mission of discovery aboard space station Alpha." Wetherbee and company are scheduled to land on runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center at 12:56 a.m. Wednesday. Forecasters are predicting low clouds, high winds and a chance of showers in the area, raising the prospect of a delay to Thursday. Entry flight director Wayne Hale praised the accomplishments of the station crews, saying the transfer of command marked "a real turning point in the space program." "It's a page in history as we transfer command from a U.S. naval officer to a Russian flight engineer of the orbital complex of the international space station," Hale said. "We'e mindful that in just a couple of weeks we'll be celebrating two anniversaries: The 40th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin as the first human to orbit the Earth and the 20th anniversary, on the same day - April 12 - of the first flight of the U.S. space shuttle. "So it's really fitting that we mark those occasions as a milestone in our joint endeavor to come together in international cooperation in space," Hale said. "We're really pleased with the way everything is going." 11:45 a.m., 03/19/01, Update: False alarm sends station crew scrambling; safety shortcoming identified Editor's Note... The following story also is posted on the Spaceflight Now web site. A fire alarm went off in the Destiny laboratory module of the international space station today. It turned out to be a false alarm, but it shut down ventilation systems, computers dropped off line and the station's new crew was unable to find the documentation needed to reactive critical systems. While electronic documentation apparently is available in at least one of the station's on-board laptop computers, the crew was not able to access it, a safety shortcoming that caught observers by surprise. The incident occurred toward the end of the crew's working day. A smoke detector in the Destiny module apparently was triggered by dust stirred up when the crew members were moving equipment about. The false reading triggered the station's fire alarm system, which automatically shut down the lab's ventilation, a routine precaution to slow the spread of a real fire. The computers shut down about the same time, but it's not yet clear if that was caused by the false alarm or because of some other issue. During a pass over a Russian ground station, Expedition Two commander Yury Usachev briefed Russian flight controllers on what had happened. "The lab and the system in the service module and FGB reacted, but there was no comm (communication) and MPV did not work," he said. "As far as the paper, on board documents, we did not have that and therefore we were a little bit confused because we did not have a real fire. "It is clear this is just an off-nominal work of the smoke detectors," he said. "But the situation is not very good." Ground controllers then asked for a blow-by-blow description of what had happened. "We heard the emergency alarm, which was the false smoke detector alarm, and the ventilation in the lab, the service module and the FGB deactivated, we only had ventilation only in the (Unity) node," Usachev said. "Right now, the ventilation in the service module is active again but we don't have it in the lab yet. "We looked at the smoke detector where it is, there was no smoke, no smell of smoke," he continued. "It is obvious that this is a false alarm. "As far as the off-nominal situation in the on-board documentation, we don't have it on board and it should be sent via email. But the computers are not working, therefore we do not have the E version of the procedure and we don't have ventilation as well." Flight controllers in Houston were able to restart the Destiny module's ventilators and by 11:20 a.m., flight engineer Susan Helms reported the station's laptops were running normally again. "We heard it kick on and we think we're in good shape," she said. Flight controllers promised to study the incident to determine what happened and to resolve the matter of the missing documentation. =================================================================== Shuttle crew packs up for return to Earth (03/20/01) 05:00 a.m., 03/20/01, Update: Shuttle crew packs up for home Editor's Note... The following story also is posted on the Spaceflight Now web site. The Discovery astronauts tested the shuttle's re-entry systems late Monday and packed up for landing early Wednesday to bring the international space station's first crew back to Earth after 141 days in the weightlessness of space. Re-adapting to gravity will pose a major challenger for Expedition One commander William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, one requiring extensive physical therapy to regain the strength and coordination needed to cope with a world of ups and downs. "The adaptation back to Earth's gravity is not easy after long duration flight," Krikalev told CBS News early today. "But that's why during flight we exercise almost every day, trying to be in shape in case of an emergency or even a normal landing. "I know that for the first several days it's going to be tough on our bodies and our balance," he said. "But in a few days, I hope, we'll be back to a normal life." Discovery is scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center at 0556 GMT (12:56 a.m. EST) Wednesday. But forecasters say low clouds, high crosswinds and possible rain showers associated with a low pressure system threaten to block a Florida landing. Conditions are expected to improve somewhat by Thursday, but the outlook remains marginal. Entry flight director Wayne Hale has activated Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., as a backup landing site for Wednesday. If the Florida forecast holds up, Discovery's crew could be diverted straight away to Edwards. That's because conditions at Edwards are expected to worsen slightly by Thursday, making a Mojave Desert landing a fairly strong possibility for Wednesday. If the forecasts hold up, that is. Whenever Discovery returns to Earth, Shepherd and company will face a lengthy recovery process to readapt to the tug of Earth's gravity. "It's going to be as if you're encountering gravity all over again for the first time," said flight surgeon Terry Taddeo. "It's like being stuck to a big magnet. Everything they used to take for granted is now going to take a lot of effort and in some cases, a lot of thinking about what you're doing. "They will experience some neuro-vestibular effects. They're going to feel sick when they get off the orbiter, they're going to feel weak. When they try to stand up, they're going to feel light headed. All of the above is going to make it not a pleasant experience, although of course, it will be very exciting for them." The Expedition One crew took off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket on Oct. 31 and docked with the international space station two days later, becoming the complex's first full-time crew. After overseeing the station's initial assembly and activation, Shepherd formally turned the ship over to Expedition Two commander Yury Usachev during a brief ceremony Sunday night. An on-time landing Wednesday for Shepherd's crew would mark the end of a voyage spanning 140 days 22 hours three minutes and 19 seconds. "I have certainly mixed emotions" about returning to Earth, Shepherd said. "Turning over command of the space station to Yury Usachev was the highlight of my professional career. I'm sad to depart. I will be happy to be safely on the ground with family and friends. So it's kind of a day with very high emotions but very different ones as well." While all three crew members typically exercised one to two hours per day aboard the station, long-term exposure to weightlessness results in bone loss, muscle deconditioning and neuro-vestibular changes requiring significant rehabilitation. "While we consider this crew to be the best conditioned and the best exercised crew that has flown a long-duration mission, what they have to look forward to is a period of several weeks and months of rest and rehabilitation afterward," Taddeo said. To ease their return, Shepherd, Gidzenko and Krikalev will make the return to Earth resting on their backs in recumbent seats on Discovery's lower deck. As soon as Discovery's hatch is opened, two NASA doctors and a Russian flight surgeon will examine the returning station astronauts and help them exit the spacecraft. "We will be able to walk on the first day after our arrival, although it's not smart to try to do too much in the first several days," Krikalev told an interviewer today. "So we will exercise from the first day and as I said, we'll walk maybe a little the first day and a little more the next day." The three station fliers will remain at the landing site - Kennedy or Edwards - for a full day before flying to the Johnson Space Center in Houston aboard a NASA training jet. Once back in Texas, "Bill Shepherd will be allowed to return home," Taddeo said. "Once there, we hope to protect his privacy, if not for medical reasons at least to restrict access, let him get familiar with his wife again and his normal life. "The Russian side has requested that the cosmonauts spend the first two to three nights at JSC crew quarters. While our systems and our thinking about medical pre-flight and post-flight activity is very similar, there are some small differences. "And one of them is they prefer to keep their crew in a similar quarantine to what they do pre-flight," Taddeo said. "So they'll be in crew quarters for the first day or two, after which they will then be allowed to go over to an apartment that is available to them and their families." Gidzenko and Krikalev are tentatively scheduled to fly back to Russia about 10 days after landing. But the rehabilitation process will continue indefinitely. And it will begin almost immediately. "The kind of activities they'll be doing, the first few days it'll be restricted to mostly assisted walking," Taddeo said. "There are some particular types of stretching we can do where they sort of relax and hold and push and you begin to re-develop all the motor-neuron connections, if you will. "Then we'll start with some gentle activities in the pool, some cycling, nothing that has any kind of impact you could impart to the individual. Then hopefully, by about the first week, you'd actually start them on a very light weight-training regime. "And then just simply ramp up from there, depending on the results you're getting, the status of the crew member, etc.," he said. "Theoretically, you could have somebody return, be able to go back to driving their own car ... after about 30 days of rehab." But it will take two months or more to see "significant improvement," Taddeo said, adding that bone loss might not be fully reversed for an additional few months. "We have a requirement that for the first 45 days after landing that they only work a six-hour day and that two hours of that day are devoted to rehabilitation," he said. 10:45 p.m., 03/20/01, Update: Weather improves for possible Florida landing The Discovery astronauts are readying the shuttle for re-entry and landing this evening, buoyed by reports that the weather in Florida might improve enough to permit a landing at the Kennedy Space Center. The first of two back-to-back Florida landing opportunities was ruled out earlier in the evening because of predicted high winds, low clouds and rain showers in the area. More of the same was expected for the second opportunity at 2:31 a.m. But the initial forecast did not hold up and conditions appear to be improving as the night wears on. But as of 10:30 p.m., it was still too close to call. If Florida doesn't work out, the astronauts have two shots at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., at 4:02 a.m. EST and 5:38 a.m. EST. The weather at Edwards is expected to be "go" all night. Here are deorbit timelines for all three landing opportunities (in EST): TIME..........EVENT 10:45 PM......Payload bay doors closed 01:05 AM......Mission control 'go' for deorbit burn 01:11 AM......Astronaut seat ingress 01:20 AM......Single hydraulic power unit start 01:25:57 AM...Deorbit ignition 01:27:08 AM...TDRS acquisition of signal 01:28:53 AM...Deorbit burn complete 01:59:47 AM...Shuttle falls into discernible atmosphere 02:04:42 AM...77-degree left roll command 02:15:32 AM...59-degree roll reversal 02:24:58 AM...Velocity less than mach 2.5 02:27:08 AM...Velocity less than mach 1 02:27:47 AM...Shuttle banks to line up on runway 02:31:25 AM...Landing on runway 15 Time...Rev. 202 Deorbit to EAFB 02:36 AM......Mission control 'go' for deorbit burn 02:42 AM......Astronaut seat ingress 02:51 AM......Single hydraulic power unit start 02:56:39 AM...Deorbit ignition 02:59:35 AM...Deorbit ignition complete 03:07:16 AM...AOS TDRS 03:30:39 AM...Shuttle falls into discernible atmosphere 03:35:34 AM...76-degree left roll command 03:46:48 AM...57-degree roll reversal 03:55:49 AM...Velocity less than mach 2.5 03:57:58 AM...Velocity less than mach 1 03:58:52 AM...Shuttle banks to line up on runway 04:02:00 AM...Landing on runway 22 Time...Rev. 203 Deorbit to EAFB 04:13 AM......Mission control 'go' for deorbit burn 04:19 AM......Astronaut seat ingress 04:28 AM......Single hydraulic power unit start 04:33:14 AM...Deorbit ignition 04:36:01 AM...Deorbit ignition complete 04:44:25 AM...AOS TDRS 05:08:20 AM...Shuttle falls into discernible atmosphere 05:11:12 AM...77-degree right roll command 05:22:09 AM...59-degree roll reversal 05:31:26 AM...Velocity less than mach 2.5 05:33:35 AM...Velocity less than mach 1 05:34:35 AM...Shuttle banks to line up on runway 05:37:34 AM...Landing on runway 22 =================================================================== Shuttle Discovery glides to smooth pre-dawn touchdown (03/21/01) 12:30 a.m., 03/21/01, Update: Weather continues to improve The weather at the Kennedy Space Center continues to improve. Flight controllers have told the astronauts to begin drinking the fluids needed to offset some of the effects of returning to gravity, an indication that entry flight director Wayne Hales thinks there is a real chance Discovery can make it back to Florida this morning. "Currently the KSC observation is go," astronaut Gus Loria radioed the crew from mission control. "We're showing a few clouds at three thousand 800, visibility 10 (miles), surface winds at 245 at seven (knots), peak niner. "The forecast for your landing time is scattered at 7,000, seven miles vis, the surface winds 260 at eight, peak 13," Loria said. "We're still holding a chance of rain showers within 30 nautical miles (but) we may be able to remove that from the forecast in a little bit. We do recommend nominal fluid loading." "Good news, thank you very much," commander James Wetherbee replied. 12:55 a.m., 03/21/01, Update: Shuttle Discovery cleared for Florida landing Entry flight director Wayne Hale has cleared the shuttle Discovery's crew to fire the ship's twin braking rockets at 1:26:06 a.m., setting up a landing back at the Kennedy Space Center at 2:31 a.m. The decision was made after forecasters with the Spaceflight Meteorology Group in Houston said they were confident conditions would remain favorable for Discovery's planned touchdown. This will be the 17th night landing in shuttle history, the 12th at the Kennedy Space Center. 01:30 a.m., 03/21/01, Update: Shuttle Discovery heads for home Flying upside down and backward over the Indian Ocean, commander James Wetherbee fired Discovery's twin braking rockets at 1:26 a.m. for two minutes and 54 seconds, slowing the shuttle by 206 mph to set up a touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center at 2:31 a.m. 02:45 a.m., 03/21/01, Update: Space odyssey ends for station crew Editor's Note... The following story also is posted on the Spaceflight Now web site. After a dramatic reversal of fortune, the shuttle Discovery dropped out of orbit and glided to a pre-dawn landing at the Kennedy Space Center today, bringing the international space station's first full-time crew back to Earth after a 141-day space odyssey. To ease their return to the unfamiliar - and uncomfortable - tug of Earth's gravity, station commander William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev made the trip home from orbit resting on their backs in recumbent seats bolted to the floor of the shuttle's lower deck. U.S. and Russian flight surgeons were standing by to assess the crew's condition and to help them off the shuttle. Even though all three crew members typically exercised one to two hours per day aboard the station, long-term exposure to weightlessness results in bone loss, muscle deconditioning and neuro-vestibular changes requiring significant rehabilitation. "While we consider this crew to be the best conditioned and the best exercised crew that has flown a long-duration mission, what they have to look forward to is a period of several weeks and months of rest and rehabilitation afterward," said Terry Taddeo, the lead flight surgeon for Shepherd's crew. For Krikalev and Gidzenko, both veterans of long-duration stays aboard the doomed Mir space station, the sensations associated with returning to Earth were familiar, if no less uncomfortable. "We will be able to walk on the first day after our arrival, although it's not smart to try to do too much in the first several days," Krikalev told an interviewer Tuesday. "So we will exercise from the first day and as I said, we'll walk maybe a little the first day and a little more the next day." After reunions with family members, detailed medical exams and a good night's sleep, the station crew will fly back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to continue their rehabilitation. "The adaptation back to Earth's gravity is not easy after long duration flight," Krikalev told CBS News. "But that's why during flight we exercise almost every day, trying to be in shape in case of an emergency or even a normal landing. "I know that for the first several days it's going to be tough on our bodies and our balance," he said. "But in a few days, I hope, we'll be back to a normal life." Shepherd, Krikalev and Gidzenko began their voyage on Oct. 31, blasting off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. The trio spent 136 days outfitting and activating the international space station before handing the complex over to a fresh crew - commander Yury Usachev, James Voss and Susan Helms - last weekend. As it turned out, Florida's mercurial weather came close to giving the Expedition One crew one more day in space. Heavy cloud cover and high winds at the Florida spaceport prompted entry flight director Wayne Hale to forego the shuttle's initial Florida landing opportunity and forecasters were not optimistic about the crew's second and final chance to make it back to the spaceport today. But throughout the night, as Hale debated whether to divert the crew to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., conditions in Florida slowly but steadily improved and Discovery ultimately was cleared to begin its descent. Flying upside down and backward over the central Indian Ocean, commander James Wetherbee fired Discovery's twin braking rockets at 1:26 a.m., slowing the ship by 206 mph and dropping the far side of its orbit deep into the atmosphere over Florida. After a high-speed glide halfway around the planet, Wetherbee let rookie pilot James Kelly take the stick for a few moments to get his first feel of a shuttle in flight before taking over for final approach and landing on runway 15. "Houston, Discovery, wheels stopped," Wetherbee reported as the shuttle rolled to a halt. "Discovery, Houston, roger wheels stopped. Congratulations on your historic missions as the crew of Discovery and Expedition One," replied astronaut Gus Loria from mission control. Main gear touchdown occurred at 2:31:41 a.m., closing out a flight spanning 5.3 million miles and 201 complete orbits since blastoff March 8 from nearby pad 39B. Mission duration was 12 days 19 hours 49 minutes and 32 seconds. Shepherd and his crewmates spent 140 days 23 hours 38 minutes and 56 seconds off the planet, 136 days 16 hours 10 minutes and 20 seconds aboard the space station. While Shepherd and company were expected to wait for assistance leaving the shuttle, Wetherbee, pilot James Kelly, flight engineer Paul Richards and Andrew Thomas were expected to climb out for a brief walk-around inspection within an hour or so of landing. For Shepherd's crew, "it's going to be as if you're encountering gravity all over again for the first time," said Taddeo. "It's like being stuck to a big magnet. Everything they used to take for granted is now going to take a lot of effort and in some cases, a lot of thinking about what you're doing. "They will experience some neuro-vestibular effects. They're going to feel sick when they get off the orbiter, they're going to feel weak. When they try to stand up, they're going to feel light headed. All of the above is going to make it not a pleasant experience, although of course, it will be very exciting for them." Once back in Texas, "Bill Shepherd will be allowed to return home," Taddeo said. "Once there, we hope to protect his privacy, if not for medical reasons at least to restrict access, let him get familiar with his wife again and his normal life. "The Russian side has requested that the cosmonauts spend the first two to three nights at JSC crew quarters. While our systems and our thinking about medical pre-flight and post-flight activity is very similar, there are some small differences. "And one of them is they prefer to keep their crew in a similar quarantine to what they do pre-flight," Taddeo said. "So they'll be in crew quarters for the first day or two, after which they will then be allowed to go over to an apartment that is available to them and their families." Gidzenko and Krikalev are tentatively scheduled to fly back to Russia about 10 days after landing. But the rehabilitation process will continue indefinitely. "The first few days it'll be restricted to mostly assisted walking," Taddeo said. "There are some particular types of stretching we can do where they sort of relax and hold and push and you begin to re-develop all the motor-neuron connections, if you will. "Then we'll start with some gentle activities in the pool, some cycling, nothing that has any kind of impact you could impart to the individual. Then hopefully, by about the first week, you'd actually start them on a very light weight-training regime. "And then just simply ramp up from there, depending on the results you're getting, the status of the crew member, etc.," he said. "Theoretically, you could have somebody return, be able to go back to driving their own car ... after about 30 days of rehab." But it will take two months or more to see "significant improvement," Taddeo said, adding that bone loss might not be fully reversed for an additional few months. ===================================================================