STS-110 MISSION ARCHIVE (FINAL) Updated: 04/19/02 Space station assembly mission 8A By William Harwood CBS News/Kennedy Space Center The following copy originally was posted on the Current Mission space page at http://cbsnews.com/network/news/space/current.html. Comments, suggestions and corrections welcome! TABLE OF CONTENTS -NASA gears up for station assembly mission (03/25/02) -Astronauts arrive; start of shuttle countdown on tap (04/01/02) -Countdown underway and on track; weather improves slightly (04/02/02) -STS-110 mission preview (04/03/02) -Weather 'iffy' for launch (04/03/02) -Shuttle launch delayed by hydrogen leak at pad (04/04/02) -Launch delayed to Monday (04/05/02) -Welding repairs complete; high winds a concern (04/07/02) -Atlantis rockets into orbit (04/08/02) -Atlantis closes in on station; Bursch letter (04/09/02) -Shuttle Atlantis docks with space station (04/10/02) -S0 truss attached to station in first EVA (04/11/02) -Astronauts take time off; Morgan named to shuttle flight (04/12/02) -Ross, Morin complete attachment of S0 (04/13/02) -Station arm rewired in third spacewalk (04/14/02) -Mobile transporter overcomes hurdles, passes initial tests (04/15/02) -Fourth spacewalk successful; Morgan meets the press (04/16/02) -Atlantis undocks from space station (04/17/02) -Astronauts test re-entry systems (04/18/02) -Atlantis returns to Earth (04/19/02) =================================================================== NASA gears up for station assembly mission (03/25/02) NASA is gearing up to launch the shuttle Atlantis on a complex four-spacewalk mission to attach a huge open-framework truss to the international space station that will form the lab's structural backbone, eventually anchoring four sets of high power solar arrays. Under an updated post-Sept. 11 security policy, NASA will not reveal the shuttle's exact launch time in advance, saying only that Atlantis is targeted for take off April 4 between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. EST. The exact launch time will be revealed 24 hours before liftoff. As NASA flight directors have explained many times in the past, howwever, a shuttle can only be launched to the space station within 10 minutes of the moment Earth's rotation carries the launch pad into the plane of the station's orbit. NASA's "preferred" launch time is the precise moment the pad is "in plane" with the station. This is public knowledge. While NASA is not releasing the STS-110 launch time, the agency continues to release orbital elements for the space station. These numbers, updated two to three times a week, precisely define the space station's orbit. They are known to amateur satellite trackers and ham radio operators as NASA two-line elements, or TLEs. Widely available on the web, TLEs can be processed by any number of readily available satellite tracking programs to predict when the space station (or any other satellite) might be visible from any location around the world (see the popular Heavens Above website for an example of how these programs work). NASA's orbital elements also can be used to predict when Earth's rotation will carry any given site - including the shuttle launch pads - directly into the orbital plane of the station. These calculations require little more than a few clicks of a mouse and as such, anyone with even rudimentary experience tracking satellites - and little or no knowledge of orbital mechanics - can determine Atlantis' launch time to within a few minutes. Because NASA has not halted U.S. government distribution of space station TLEs, we see no problem with reporting that satellite tracking software indicates Atlantis will take off within a few minutes of 5:16 p.m. on April 4. The summary timeline for mission STS-110 is available from NASA in a format that references in-flight events to mission elapsed time, or MET, which starts at the moment of liftoff. The publicly available timeline does not include any references to actual time. A modified version of the summary timeline, one that assumes a liftoff at 5:16 p.m., is posted below. An updated flight plan will be posted when the exact launch time is revealed 24 hours before liftoff. The NASA television schedule will be released at that time and will be posted here as soon as possible thereafter. Otherwise, launch preparations continue, on Earth and in orbit. At 3:58 p.m. Sunday, an unmanned Progress supply ship successfully docked to the Zvezda command module's aft port after a three-day orbital chase. The three-man crew's Soyuz lifeboat remains docked at the Earth-facing port of the Zarya module. Canadian software engineers, meanwhile, continue to perfect a programming patch that will enable the station's robot arm to mount the S0 truss on the top of the Destiny laboratory module despite a failure in the arm's wrist joint. The patch will block out that suspect hardware to permit the truss's attachment. A replacement wrist joint will be ferried into orbit May 31 and installed during a subsequent spacewalk. A detailed preview of shuttle mission STS-110 will be posted here late next week. In the meantime, here's a timeline of mission highlights (in EST/EDT and mission elapsed time): Eastern....DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/04/02 05:16 PM...00...00...00...STS-109 launch (time approximate0 10:16 PM...00...05...00...Crew sleep begins 04/06/02 12:32 PM...01...19...16...ISS docking APRIL 7: BEGIN EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME AT 2 AM (GMT-4) 04/07/02 12:06 PM...02...17...50...Spacewalk-1: Airlock egress and daily setup 06:16 PM...03...00...00...Spacewalk-1: Airlock repressurization 10:16 PM...03...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins 04/09/02 12:06 PM...04...17...50...Spacewalk-2: Airlock egress and daily setup 06:26 PM...05...00...10...Spacewalk-2: Airlock repressurization 10:16 PM...05...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins 04/10/02 12:06 PM...05...17...50...Spacewalk-3: Egress and daily setup 06:26 PM...06...00...10...Spacewalk-3: Begin airlock repressurization 10:16 PM...06...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins 04/11/02 12:31 PM...06...18...15...Crew news conference 04/12/02 12:06 PM...07...17...50...Spacewalk-4: Egress and daily setup 06:26 PM...08...00...10...EVA-4: Airlock repressurization begins 09:46 PM...08...03...30...STS crew sleep begins 04/13/02 03:46 PM...08...21...30...STS/ISS undocking 04/15/02 12:46 PM...10...18...30...Deorbit rocket firing 01:52 PM...10...19...36...Landing =================================================================== Astronauts arrive; start of shuttle countdown on tap (04/01/02) Working under an unfamiliar news "brownout," engineers at the Kennedy Space Center are gearing up to start the shuttle Atlantis' countdown today, setting the stage for blastoff late Thursday afternoon on a complex space station assembly mission. The goal of the 109th shuttle mission is installation of a huge 26,716-pound structural truss packed with computers, ammonia coolant lines and electrical systems that ultimately will route power from the station's eventual solar power arrays into the outpost. The 44-foot-long S0 (S-zero) truss will be installed by shuttle astronaut Ellen Ochoa, operating the space station's Canadarm2 space crane. But recent problems with one of two command channels, or "strings," used to control the crane's wrist-roll joint threw a wrench of sorts into NASA planning. The station astronauts have two redundant command paths to operate all of the arm's joints. But the wrist-roll capability in one string was recently lost. The other string works just fine but should it fail during truss installation, the other string would detect a wrist-roll fault and go into "safe mode." To protect against that possibility, flight planners at the Johnson Space Center revised the trajectory the arm will follow to minimize use of the wrist-roll joint. In addition, a software patch was written and uploaded to the station over the past few days to mask out the wrist-roll failure should the arm ultimately end up using the faulty command string. The patch has been successfully tested by the station crew, which put the arm through the same motions that will be required for truss installation. With the patch in place, the arm will not go into safe mode even if some subsequent failure forces Ochoa to use the command string with the wrist-roll problem. In that case, the joint would be manually cranked into the proper orientation during the first of four planned spacewalks by Atlantis' crew. With the software patch in place, the only question mark for this week's launch is, as usual, the weather. Forecasters are predicting a 40 percent chance of bad weather during the shuttle's 10-minute launch window that could delay liftoff. The concern is that a cold front moving through northern Florida will result in multiple cloud decks, afternoon showers and possible thunderstorms. There's a 10 percent chance shuttle fueling operations will be delayed. Winds are predicted to be out of 140 degrees at 10 knots with gusts to 15 knots. That's pretty much right down the runway with only a slight crosswind component. Should launch slip one day, forecasters are predicting an 80 percent chance of good weather. The odds improve to 90 percent "go" on Saturday. Under a recently implemented post Sept. 11 security policy, NASA is conducting Atlantis' countdown and launch under a news brownout of sorts. The agency will not say exactly when the countdown is scheduled to begin today - they will confirm it is underway Tuesday morning - or exactly when the shuttle will take off, saying only that launch is targeted between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Thursday. The exact launch time will be revealed 24 hours before launch. NASA's security policy poses a considerable mystery to veteran shuttle watchers. The agency has not provided any detailed explanation of the reasoning behind a policy that gives potential adversaries a launch date and a four-hour launch period many days in advance and then an exact launch time 24 hours before liftoff. It is extremely difficult to understand how this policy might thwart a determined foe. For past classified military missions, the launch time was kept secret until the T-minus nine-minute mark in the countdown. Why a similar policy wasn't implemented in this case is unclear. In addition, the launch time of a station-bound shuttle can be easily computed using satellite tracking software and NASA's own two-line elements for the space station, the set of numbers that define the lab's orbit. Two-line elements, which are widely available on the web - including dozens of NASA web sites - are used by amateurs primarily to determine when the station or any other bright satellite will be visible from a given location. Little or no knowledge of orbital mechanics is required and most programs automate the entire procedure. For a space shuttle to rendezvous with the station, it must take off within 10 minutes of the moment Earth's rotation carries the launch pad into the plane of the lab's orbit. Under long-standing NASA policy, the "preferred launch time" for a flight-day three rendezvous falls in the middle of that 10-minute window, just before the moment the pad is actually "in plane." Some satellite tracking programs compute when a given ground site is in plane with a given satellite's orbit. At least one "freeware" program has been tweaked, based on all previous shuttle-to-station launch times, to improve its accuracy, it is believed, to within one minute or so. The timelines posted below, however, are based on the plane crossing time of roughly 5:16 p.m. That time is believed accurate to within about three minutes. NASA could complicate efforts to determine a shuttle's launch time by halting official distribution of the station's two-line elements. But that would severely curtail, if not eliminate, the public's ability to watch the $30 billion outpost pass overhead and it is not clear how that would increase security. The station's general orbit is widely known and veteran satellite observers are adept at reverse engineering two-line elements based on actual sightings. And with a high-interest spacecraft as bright as the station, sightings are relatively easy. Should the two-line elements disappear from official channels, launch times accurate to within five or 10 minutes or so almost certainly would appear on the web in short order. No one wishes to compromise shuttle security in any way. But the current policy does not address the issues mentioned above and given the trivial nature of the calculations, the ballpark launch time has been widely known for weeks. As such, we see no point in denying the obvious. The real issue, perhaps, is concern about a July shuttle flight carrying Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli to fly in space. Unlike shuttle-to-station flights, however, the July mission is not going to the station and this writer knows of no easy way to predict when, in a four-hour window, that shuttle might take off. But NASA's current security policy is so poorly implemented that in at least one case, the target launch time is posted on a publicly accessible web page. However, that launch time is not widely known and we will not repeat it here. 03:30 p.m., 04/01/02, Update: Atlantis astronauts arrive for launch The shuttle Atlantis' crew flew to the Kennedy Space Center today in preparation for blastoff Thursday on a challenging space station assembly mission. The astronauts touched down at the Shuttle Landing Facility around noon after flights from Houston in T-38 jet trainers. "We're really happy to be down here to the Cape," said commander Michael Bloomfield. "A trip into space always begins down here at the Kennedy Space Center and there's a great group of people down here that build spaceships that allow people to go into space. We're very fortunate to be part of that team." Pilot Stephen Frick, making his first flight, noted that Atlantis will be making its first launch with a full set of upgraded block 2 main engines, the final step in a billion-dollar effort to improve engine performance and increase safety. The block 2 engines, built by Boeing's Rocketdyne division, feature new high pressure hydrogen turbopumps built by Pratt & Whitney. Working in concert with Pratt & Whitney oxygen pumps already in place, along with a wider combustion chamber throat and other safety upgrades, the block 2 engines promise to lower the odds of a catastrophic failure. "I had a chance to work with the folks who were developing them and I'm real excited to launch with that," Frick said. "The guys at Pratt & Whitney at West Palm Beach (Fla.) and the guys at Rocketdyne at Canoga Park (Calif.) and at the Stennis Space Center, Marshall (Space Flight Center) and here at the Cape gave us some great equipment and I look forward to getting a chance to ride those to orbit." For astronaut Ellen Ochoa, the highlight of the mission will be using the international space station's new robot arm to pull a 27,000-pound structural truss out of Atlantis' cargo bay so it can be attached to the top of the U.S. Destiny laboratory module. The S0 truss is the centerpiece of a cross truss that eventually will stretch the length of a football field, supporting four huge sets of solar arrays. "This is an exciting flight for the station arm," she said. "This is only the second time we're using it to lift a big piece of equipment out of the payload bay. ... And it's the first time we're going to be using it to move spacewalkers around. So during the EVAs, we'll be using it extensively. It's fun to work the robotic arm in part because it's really a team effort." =================================================================== Countdown underway and on track; weather improves slightly (04/02/02) The shuttle Atlantis' blacked-out countdown is ticking smoothly toward launch Thursday on a space station assembly mission, officials say. Under a new post Sept. 11 security policy, NASA officials confirmed the countdown is underway but they would not say when it began. Likewise, the agency will not announce Atlantis' exact launch time until sometime Wednesday, 24 hours before liftoff. Based on independent analysis of the international space station's orbit, however, launch is believed to be targeted for around 5:13 p.m. Thursday. NASA test director Jeff Spaulding said today the countdown is on track and that engineers are not working any major problems at pad 39B. Forecasters, meanwhile, have upgraded the weather outlook for Thursday from 60 percent "go" to 70 percent. The outlook for Firday improves to 80 percent go and drops to 60 percent go on Saturday. Because launch is targeted for the afternoon, during NASA's normal work day, Spaulding said shuttle managers likely would consider making three attempts in a row if problems developed that prevented a launch on Thursday or Friday. =================================================================== STS-110 mission preview (04/03/02) NASA resumes assembly of the international space station this week and next with launch of the shuttle Atlantis on a four-spacewalk flight to attach a 27,000-pound truss, the central component of a massive solar array-carrying beam that eventually will stretch the length of a football field. "We'll launch 50 tons of hardware to the station this year," said Tommy Holloway, space station program manager at the Johnson Space Center. "We're now at 300,000 pounds, about a third of the way there. Sometimes we think we're about done, but we really have a lot of work left to do in the next two years to get to a point where we'll then be ready to deploy (modules built by) the international partners." The $600 million S0 (pronounced S-zero) truss aboard Atlantis is equipped with four computers, two laser ring gyros and GPS antennas for on-board navigation, a maze of ammonia coolant lines, miles of electrical cabling, hundreds of connectors and complex power control and conditioning equipment. The completed truss eventually will carry four huge sets of solar arrays, two at each end. Power from the arrays will be routed into the station through the S0 truss and the ammonia coolant needed to keep the station's electronics from overheating will be routed through S0 to giant radiators mounted on outboard truss elements. The 44-foot-long S0 truss also is equipped with a $190 million rail car that will roll along tracks running the length of the completed truss, carrying the station's Canadarm 2 robotic crane to various work sites as required to install new equipment or to help spacewalking astronauts make repairs. "Once we add the mobile berthing system to the mobile transporter on the next flight (in early June), it will allow the robotic arm to travel the length of the truss," said space station flight director Robert Castle. "So we can actually grapple things, roll along the length of the truss and install things at the end of it." In fact, the solar array wings - all two acres of them - and other critical outboard power and cooling systems cannot be installed without using the Canadarm2 on its mobile platform. And the first step on the road to completing the station's initial assembly is installation of the S0 truss. "The truss element has been called a spacewalker's playground and we've nicknamed the underwater mockup of it the 'jungle gym,'" said Dina Barclay, lead spacewalk officer at the Johnson Space Center. "It's 44 feet long, it has more than 150 astronaut hand holds, almost 50 sockets for foot restraints, has more than 1,000 spacewalk actuated connections and has more than 50 (electronics) boxes that can be changed out. "The truss plays a vital role in the space station's future," she added, "because future truss segments will attach to either side of it and all the avionics and ammonia cooling that go up to and come in from the other truss segments go through S0 for power distribution and cooling for the modules, which is where the astronauts live and work. "The mobile transporter also plays a key role," Barclay said. "On the next mission (in late May), the next part of the mobile servicing system will come up and it will mount on top of the mobile transporter to give Canadarm2 a mobile platform to finish the space station assembly." If all goes well, the 109th shuttle mission will begin around 5:13 p.m. Thursday with a launch from pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. Under a post Sept. 11 security plan, NASA managers decided not reveal the exact launch time until 24 hours before liftoff. Until then, the agency said only that Atlantis would take off between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. But to reach the space station, a shuttle must be launched within about five minutes of the moment Earth's rotation carries the launch pad into the plane of the station's orbit. As a result, amateur satellite trackers had no problem determining Atlantis' launch time to within a few seconds, well in advance of NASA's 24-hour announcement. To protect the launch times for future flights, NASA managers are considering whether to halt official distribution of space station two-line elements, the widely available numbers used by satellite tracking programs to determine the station's orbit and when it might be visible from a viewer's location. Atlantis' crew is made up of commander Michael Bloomfield, pilot Stephen Frick, robot arm operator Ellen Ochoa and spacewalkers Steven Smith, Rex Walheim, Jerry Ross and Lee Morin. "Jerry and Lee are both grandfathers," Barclay noted. "And performing a spacewalk is no easy feat, it requires mental and physical stamina. And these guys have it. To our team, it's just a fun piece of trivia and the only time it even comes up is when these proud grandpas pull out the photos." Said Bloomfield: "I can't verify it, but I believe this will be the first time two grandfathers will perform a spacewalk together. Steve Smith likes to refer to them as the 'Silver Team.'" Ross also is the first man in history, U.S. or Russian, to make seven space flights, an achievement that comes 41 years after Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space and 21 years after the first flight of a space shuttle. "I know what to expect and I can't wait to do it again," Ross, 54, said before launch. "I think I must be addicted to spaceflight because I love every aspect of it. ... Obviously, I'm looking very much forward to the launch, the launch is an incredible experience, something that you cannot put into words other than just smile and think about it a lot. "I think the Lord above has been taking care of me all through this. It's hard to understand how I've been able to be so fortunate as to do this, but I can tell you I certainly have appreciated every minute of it." Astronaut John Young, an Apollo moonwalker who commanded the first shuttle mission in April 1981, was the first man to reach the six flight milestone. In an interview with CBS Radio, Young said "records are made to be broken and I'm really proud of old Jerry." "He's a hard worker," Young said. "He's been in this business a long time, he's done all these (spacewalks) and he's a great fellow. I think it's just great that people get to fly in space more than we used to. I'd like to go back, but if I did it'd be very dangerous because my wife said if I went back up there she'd kill me." For his part, Ross said no astronaut will ever eclipse the accomplishments of Young, a veteran of two Gemini flights, two voyages to the moon - including one lunar landing - and two space shuttle missions. "John Young is my hero," Ross said. "There's nobody who will ever surpass what John Young has been able to achieve in his lifetime as an astronaut. I don't care how many times anybody ever flies in space, they won't be able to outdo what he's done because of what he did and how he did them." If Ross's resume is impressive, consider Morin's. "You've probably never met anybody like Lee Morin," Ochoa said. "He has an impressive number of degrees, he has a bachelor's, two masters, an M.D., a Ph.D., and has done residencies in surgery, in aerospace medicine. He has an array of Navy certifications as a diving officer, undersea medical officer, a submarine officer and as a flight surgeon. He's been involved in special ops in Desert Storm, he's done jungle guerrilla warfare training, I think he's done Samurai training." Grandfathers indeed. "I'm not only the most senior member of the silver team, but also the most underachieving member of the silver team," Ross joked. UPGRADED ENGINES POWER LAUNCH TO STATION When Young and pilot Robert Crippen blasted off on the first shuttle mission on April 12, 1981, they rode into orbit on the power of two solid-fuel boosters and a trio of hydrogen-fueled main engines built by Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif. In the wake of the 1986 Challenger disaster, NASA embarked on a $1 billion program to improve the safety and reliability of the main engines, a program that reaches fruition this week with launch of Atlantis on mission STS-110. Atlantis is the first shuttle equipped with three upgraded block 2 main engines. NASA already had replaced the Rocketdyne-built high pressure oxygen pump with a more robust pump built by Pratt & Whitney. Other post-Challenger upgrades included addition of a wide-throat combustion chamber to reduce internal pressure. the elimination of hard-to-inspect welds and a new manifold to feed propellants to the combustion chamber. The block 2 engine includes the addition of a Pratt & Whitney high pressure hydrogen pump. While the new pumps weigh more than the Rocketdyne models originally developed for the main engines, they contain fewer welds and tougher turbine blades, reducing the amount of costly post-flight inspections and serving that is required. Equipped with three block two engines, a shuttle's overall reliability increases by 10 percent, NASA managers say, while the odds of a catastrophic engine-related failure drop to 1-in-483. Prior to implementation of the new hydrogen pump, the odds were roughly 1-in-438. "We put the high pressure oxidizer pump on some years ago and we've got two flights with the high pressure fuel turbopump," said shuttle program manager Ronald Dittemore. "This will be the first flight with a cluster of three. "These pumps are fantastic. We've basically eliminated the welding inside the pump that we could not inspect. We've made the pump beefier, more robust. And because of that, we've accepted about a 300-pound weight increase per pump. But we wanted to do that, intentionally sacrificing some performance, to improve our safety. "Some of the failures we have seen on this new pump (during testing) would have taken out a pump and an engine in the past," Dittemore said. "With this new pump, it just keeps on chugging. It'll run to MECO (main engine cutoff) or it'll have a graceful shutdown. So just subjectively, it's a tremendous improvement in our safety." The high pressure hydrogen pump, a bit larger than a beer keg, generates nearly 70,000 horsepower during engine operation. The old pumps, Dittemore said, were so lightweight and finely tuned that the loss of a single turbine blade could lead to a catastrophic failure. "In the old pump, if we had blade damage or lost a blade it was pretty much a catastrophic event, it just could not stand losing a single blade," he said. "That was because the pump was designed to be lightweight ... and high performance. And so if it got out of balance by losing a blade, it just kind of cored itself out and that became a catastrophic event. With the new hydrogen pumps, "I can lose a blade or multiple blades and it does not send my pump out of balance," Dittemore said. "And so I'm able to withstand those types of failures and still have a graceful shutdown or make it to the (planned) main engine cutoff." Assuming an on-time liftoff, Bloomfield and Frick will guide Atlantis through a standard rendezvous profile, firing the shuttle's maneuvering jets periodically to tweak the ship's orbit and set up a docking with the international space station around 12:30 p.m. April 6. The shuttle will approach the station from below, passing about 600 feet beneath the outpost before slowly looping up to a point directly in front of the outpost. At that point, Atlantis will be oriented with its tail facing Earth and its payload bay facing the station. The station will be oriented with its long axis in the direction of travel. A pressurized mating adapter mounted on the forward end of the Destiny laboratory module will face Atlantis. Destiny, in turn, is attached to the U.S. Unity module, a multi-hatch gateway linking the lab to the rest of the station. Directly across Unity from Destiny is a pressurized mating adapter leading into the Russian Zarya propulsion and cargo module. Zarya, in turn, is attached to the Russian Zvezda command module at the aft end of the station's long axis. A Progress supply ship currently is docked to Zvezda's aft port while the on-board crew's Soyuz lifeboat is docked to a downward-facing port on the Zarya module. The Pirs docking module, currently vacant, is attached to the nadir docking port at the forward end of Zvezda. Extending 90 feet up from the Unity module's zenith hatch is the Z1 truss and P6 solar array, which provides the bulk of the station's current power. The P6 array ultimately will be repositioned at the end of the station's main truss, the first element of which is being installed during Atlantis' mission. The station's Quest airlock module, which will be used for all four of the upcoming STS-110 spacewalks, is attached to Unity's right-side, or starboard, hatch. Positioned directly in front of the station's long axis, Bloomfield will manually guide Atlantis in so the docking system in the shuttle's cargo bay can mate with its counterpart on the pressurized mating adapter, or PMA. "We call it a V-bar approach," Bloomfield said, referring to the station's velocity vector. "We'll fly below the international space station and then we'll fly all the way around out into the front, into what we call the V-bar, but we're flying now out in front of the station. And then finally, we'll fly in on that V-bar until we dock. "It's been done before, it's proven, so there's not anything new on our flight and so you know if you do it right it's going to work," he said. "We're fairly confident it's going to work." Once Atlantis is docked and hatches between the two craft are opened, Expedition 4 commander Yury Onufrienko and his two NASA crewmates - Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz - will welcome the shuttle crew aboard. Launched Dec. 5, Onufrienko, Bursch and Walz are four months into a planned six-month stay aboard the space station. The Atlantis astronauts will be their first visitors since setting up shop aboard the outpost. "They've been up there for more than 100 days now and I can only imagine what it would be like to be isolated up there for a hundred days and not have any other people to talk to," Ross said. "So I'm looking forward to sharing some experiences with them and hoping they can enjoy that time together before we depart." The first spacewalk to attach the S0 truss is planned for the day after docking. The second and third spacewalks are targeted for April 9 and 10 with the fourth following on April 12, the 21st anniversary of the first shuttle flight and the 41st anniversary of Gagarin's flight. If all goes well, Atlantis' crew will return to Earth just before 2 p.m. on April 15. "The shuttle crew will return after having loosened and tightened approximately 250 bolts and after having mated or demated 110 electrical connectors," said Barclay. "They will have certainly done their part building our international space station." S0 TRUSS A MARVEL OF COMPLEXITY The S0 truss has the misfortune of being saddled with a particularly utilitarian name, one that does little to convey the complexity of the structure or its critical nature. But Ben Sellari, NASA's S0 launch package manager, makes it clear S0 is "more than just a truss element that some people may generally think of as just a girder or a piece of structure." With more than 475,000 parts, S0 measures 44.2 feet long, about 14 feet wide and weighs 26,716 pounds. In terms of sheer mechanical and electrical complexity, only the Destiny laboratory module can eclipse it. "All of the power distribution for space station, once we're in the assembly complete phase when we have our outboard arrays, will come through S-zero's switching units and be able to be distributed to the other modules, the other truss elements," he said. "It'll also provide us, for the first time, with a cross-strap capability so that if we were to lose a (solar array power) channel in one area, we could then augment that from another array channel through the switching unit." Major components mounted inside the S0 truss include: - Power distribution systems to handle the flow of electricity from the solar arrays into the space station - DC-to-DC converter units to step down solar array voltage to levels needed by the station's internal systems - Secondary power control and switching systems - Two computers to control systems inside the S0 truss segment - Two computers to control systems in future outboard truss segments - Global Positioning System antennas and two laser ring gyros to permit on-board U.S. determination of the station's orbit and orientation for solar array and antenna aiming - A three-switch video distribution system that will route television from all externally mounted cameras, including those on the Canadarm2, into the station or down to Earth - Strain guages, accelerometers and other instrumentation to monitor the truss's structural rigidity - Instrumentation to monitor the space environment, including radiation sensors - The mobile transporter and its associated rails and subsystems Until the solar arrays are mounted on the end of the outboard truss segments, the Z1 truss atop the Unity module will feed electricity to S0 through connectors that will be hooked up by the Atlantis spacwwalkers. Once the outboard arrays are in place, S0 will send power to Z1 and the rest of the station. The S0 truss provides the structural attach points for the port and starboard - P1 and S1 - trusses that will be attached later this year, along with pass-through ammonia cooling interfaces. Utility trays on S0 will provide power, cooling and data to Node 2, a module virtually identical to Unity that will be launched later. That power then will be routed to international modules. The completed solar array truss will have 10 Canadarm2 work sites, two of which are located on S0. The day after Atlantis docks with the space station, Ochoa, operating the Canadarm2 from inside the U.S. lab module, will pull S0 out of the shuttle's cargo bay and mount it on top of Destiny, using a powerful claw already in place to temporarily lock it in place. Moments later, Smith and Walheim will exit Quest and begin work to attach power lines and to permanently latch the in place, deploying two bipods on the forward face of the truss and bolting them to fittings on Destiny's hull. The next day, Ross and Morin will deploy and attach two massive tripods on the aft-facing side of S0 to complete the truss' mechanical attachment. "Our busiest day by far is flight day four, the day after we rendezvous and the first EVA," Bloomfield said. "S0 has a timeline on it, a lifetime, once we take it out of the payload bay it's got a 16-hour clock and once that 16 hours expires, then the possibility exists that we could do damage to S0 because it got too cold. So that's the clock we're running against where we have to get power on it. "If we start getting behind, we have a second set of cables up there called LTA cables, which is launch-to-activate, which is basically a way to bypass the normal way of hooking up S0 and give us power to the critical boxes just for a short amount of time," he said. The mobile transporter is mounted on the forward face of S0, attached to a pair of rails that run the full length of the truss segment. The transporter measures 102 by 107 inches, weighs 1,923 pounds and is capable of a top speed, unloaded, of one inch per second. When it crosses joints between truss segments, the speed will drop to a glacial 0.06 inches per second. A "linear drive unit" inside the transporter "is basically like the motor, transmission and brakes in your car," Sellari said. "This is what makes the mobile transporter go. It has two drive devices on it that engage the rail and through friction, allow the mobile transporter to go up and down the rails." The transporter also is equipped with a quartet of load transfer units, or LTUs, claw-like devices that lock the platform in place at various truss work sites so the Canadarm2 can safely maneuver large components. A device called a roller suspension unit keeps the mobile transporter on its rails in the weightlessness of space, using five spring-loaded wheels to apply the force and tension necessary for the linear drive unit to properly engage. The transporter, and eventually Canadarm2, will route data and video back to the station through a flat cable called the trailing umbilical system, or TUS. The TUS will unroll behind the transporter as it inches along and roll back up when it goes the other way. At each of the 10 Canadarm2 work sites along the completed truss, two umbilicals will be available to provide the power needed to actually operate the Canadarm2. During the third spacewalk of Atlantis' mission, Smith and Walheim plan to remove launch locks and other equipment to free the transporter for movement. The next day, the transporter's linear drive system will be powered up to drive it from its launch position to work site 4 on the starboard end of S0 and then to work site 5 on the port side. Assuming all that goes smoothly, the transporter will be moved back to work site 4 and locked in place for use during the next assembly mission. "We'll actually translate it from its launch position to one of the work sites and then we'll translate it to the other work site," Castle said. "We'll leave it in the position UF-2 wants it, because UF-2 brings up the mobile berthing system, which attaches to the mobile transporter. We want to put it in the right spot for them." Overall, S0 is "the centerpiece" of the station's main solar array truss, Castle said. "It's what the rest of the truss elements build out on." "The truss elements are very important because that gets all the power modules up and that's what allows us to add all the partner elements," he said. " We're rapidly approaching the point where we're going to be power limited, we need to go ahead and build the truss out and get the other power elements on line." CANADIAN SPACE CRANE CRITICAL TO MISSION SUCCESS S0 will be only the second major component manipulated in space by Canadarm2. Ochoa will operate the arm from within Destiny using five television monitors to see what she's doing. The monitors will provide views from cameras mounted on the arm itself and in the shuttle's cargo bay. "This flight is generally billed as an EVA flight, which makes sense given the four hard EVAs coming up," Ochoa said. "But I tend to think of it as a robotics flight. it really is a test of the station robotic arm. It's only the second time we're using the arm to lift a large payload out of the bay and this one, S0 truss, weighs twice what the airlock weighed. So it will be quite a bit different task than moving the airlock around." At various times during the spacewalks, she said, "we put the arm in all different kinds of configurations, wrapped around the zenith side and the nadir side of the lab and often with really tight clearances. So it's really a team effort to carry out all the robotics tasks." Ochoa will be assisted by Bursch and Walz, both of whom have extensive experience operating the arm in orbit. "The station robotic arm is a real challenge to operate and Ellen is actually doing it from inside the lab," Bloomfield said. "There are no windows in the lab that allow Ellen to look outside and see where the arm is moving. So she's very dependent on all the camera views we can give her so that she does not take the arm and run it into anything up there. "Those camera views come from Steve's hard work. He has put together an incredible video system that's going to allow Ellen to see all the different views and make sure that she has the clearance to safely operate the arm." Each of the seven joints in Canadarm2 is equipped with two redundant avionics "strings" used to remotely control joint drive motors, brakes and various other systems. One string is arbitrarily considered "prime" and the other "backup." During tests in early March, engineers discovered that the wrist-roll joint in the primary string was not working properly, apparently because of a problem with the internal electronics in that string. The backup string has no such problems and the joint worked normally. But should a similar glitch occur during S0 installation, the arm's software would consider the joint failed and put the crane into so-called "safe mode." To prevent that possibility, engineers redesigned the trajectory the arm will follow during S0 installation to minimize use of the wrist-roll joint. In addition, Canadian programmers wrote a software patch to prevent the arm from going into safe mode if the backup string does, in fact, suffer a wrist-roll avionics glitch. In that case, Smith and Walheim would use a power tool to manually rotate the stalled wrist-roll joint into the required orientation. Ochoa said the crew has trained with the new procedures and that she does not expect any problems. "While all the joint angles for the positions are different (in the revised trajectory), a lot of what we do with the hand controller, all the manual flying, is essentially the same," Ochoa said. "The main change is we've changed sort of the middle part of the maneuver, which used to be an auto maneuver that was going to move S0 forward and around the corner, getting it kind of set up for the install, which is flown manually. "We've taken that out and replaced that with a series of single joint maneuvers," she said. "And the whole goal of that was to try to reduce moving the wrist roll joint whenever we could, to move it as little as possible, and also to always be in a position where if the good string failed and we had to go over to the string where we can't use the wrist roll, there's only one time where the EVA crew members would have to come out and actually move that joint. We could still go ahead and manually install S0 on the lab with the arm." A new wrist roll joint with two sets of presumably pristine avionics equipment, will be installed during the next shuttle mission. Launch originally was planned for early May, but the flight was delayed to May 31 to provide more time to build a payload bay mounting fixture and to improve the angle between the sun and the station's orbit. SPACEWALKS POSE TOUGH CHALLENGE TO SHUTTLE CREW The first spacewalk of Atlantis' mission is scheduled to begin the day after docking, just after Ochoa completes S0's initial attachment to Destiny. Assisted by Bursch, Ochoa will "move it out over the port side of the combined stack and then move the orientation around, come up over the top of the lab and then very precisely bring S0 down into what's called the module-to-truss-segment attach system, or MT-SAS," Castle said. "You'll also see the lab cradle assembly being used. They'll align them very precisely, then activate a capture latch. The capture latch is actually on the lab, it looks like a claw. We'll capture S0, pull the structure together and then some alignment guides will line it up very precisely. "That will all be done in the very first part of the crew day," Castle said. "We're timing it so just as we're finished with the capture latch operation, we'll be depressing the airlock to take the first EVA crew outside." Smith, wearing a spacesuit with red stripes around the legs, is a veteran of five previous spacewalks while Walheim, wearing an unmarked white suit, will be making his first such excursion. Smith will deploy the telescoping struts making up the forward bipods and Walheim will "rigidize" them like the legs of a camera tripod and bolt them to fittings on Destiny's hull. Smith, meanwhile, will open a trap door near the center of S0 and float part way into the truss to loosen a set of clamps allowing a large cable tray to deploy. The cable tray is on the aft side of S0 facing the Z1 truss. It is known as the "rat's nest." "It's buried between several modules and trusses and this area could be called the heart of space station for spacewalkers," Barclay said. "This is where many electrical and fluid lines mate between the modules." Before making any such connections, however, circuit interrupt devices, or CIDs, will be installed and activated like circuit breakers to ensure no electricity is flowing through any of the cables. Smith then will disconnect a set of diagnostic cables and release a pair of bolts to actually lower the tray before connecting 10 cables between the tray and connectors on Z1. On the front side of the truss, Walheim, occasionally assisted by Smith, will deploy another tray and make another 20 electrical connections. If time is available, Smith will install two more CIDs inside the truss to allow future assembly crews to "break electrical circuits in the middle and reduce the amount of space station power down that's required during later assembly missions," Barclay said. The final major goal of the first spacewalk is to power up the mobile transporter's internal heaters through the trailing umbilical system. Working together, Smith and Walheim will electrically connect the TUS and install about 20 feet of cable in guides along the mobile transporter's rails. "So at the end of EVA-1, we've got two out of the four strut groups attached, so we're structurally in good shape for quite a while, we'll have all the power hooked up so all the avionics are up and working and we'll activate S0 and all the equipment on it that evening, after the crew finishes the EVA," Castle said. The next day, the combined station-shuttle crew will work inside the lab complex to transfer equipment to and from Atlantis, configure cameras and to top off the airlock module's oxygen and nitrogen supplies. The second spacewalk will be conducted by Ross and Morin on flight day six. Ross has more than 44 hours of spacewalk time during his six previous missions while Morin is a rookie. For identification, Ross' spacesuit has broken red dashes around the legs while Morin's has diagonal candy cane stripes. The primary goal of the excursion is to deploy and latch the two tripods on the aft side of S0 that will complete its structural attachment to Destiny. "Each of these deploy out, attach to the lab, there's an expanding collar that allows their length to change," Castle said. "So they attach them to the lab and then tighten down the collar so the length can't change any more. So you wind up with a fairly rigid structural member when you're done." Ross and Morin also will remove the two large keel pins that helped anchor S0 in the shuttle's cargo bay for launch. The keel pins and two other components called drag links must be removed to allow the mobile transporter to move back and forth along its rails. Finally, the spacewalkers will attach a second TUS to the mobile transport to provide redundancy. The third spacewalk, by Smith and Walheim, is scheduled for the next day. For this excursion, the shuttle's robot arm will be used to move Smith about while the two spacewalkers reconfigure the cabling for the station's Canadarm2. The Canadian crane currently draws its power from connections to Destiny's electrical system. The goal of the third spacewalk is to connect the robot arm to power feeds on the S0 truss, allowing it to operate from the mobile transporter. "We really don't want to power down all of Canadarm 2 all at once, we're going to bring it down one redundant string at a time," Castle said. "So we'll power down one string, do the power reconfiguration, power that string up, verify it works, then we'll power down the other string of avionics and chance the power configurations there." The arm's redundant power lines will be connected to the truss at two points. While ground engineers test the first cable reconfiguration, Smith and Walheim will remove launch locks holding the mobile transporter in place. After making the second set of robot arm connections, the spacewalkers will split up and reposition tools while the ground runs another series of tests to make sure the crane is once again fully operational. The final task for the spacewalkers is to install a ladder-like "spur" between the Quest airlock and S0 to make it easier for future assembly crews to get up to the truss work sites. The next day, the crew will work with ground engineers to test the mobile transporter, commanding it to roll between the two work sites on S0. The day after that, Ross and Morin will stage the mission's fourth and final spacewalk. "EVA-4 is a bunch of get-ahead stuff," Castle said. "If nothing on EVA-4 gets done, we've had a very successful mission. All the critical things that have to get done, get done in the first three EVAs. That's by design. If anything doesn't get done on the first three EVAs, we'll do it on EVA 4. And if something falls off of EVA 4, it's things that can be picked up down stream ... fairly easily." Ross will ride on the end of Canadarm2 to install a pair of external lights while Morin torques three bolts to complete the structural load path between S0 and Destiny. The two spacewalkers then will finish deploying several small pieces of equipment around the truss, including a work platform and a tool stanchion. Ross also will position two "energy absorbers" on either side of the mobile transporter. "These are essentially large shock absorbers," Barclay said. "Future spacewalkers will have hand-propelled carts to wheel down the truss rail and these energy absorbers allow for attachment of these carts to the mobile transporter and they also would cushion any collision between the cart and the transporter." Morin will deploy a charged particle directional spectrometer that ultimately will be used to sniff out any leaks in the ammonia coolant system and others. He also will deploy a swing arm near the rat's nest carrying connectors that later will be hooked up to the Unity module. At the same time, Ross will be conducting a video survey "to make sure alignment marks are in good shape for later mating fo the Canadarm2 base system," Barclay said. He also will install five spacewalk handrails on S0 and inspect the GPS antennas. "A lot of these tasks are kind of generic, driving a bolt, removing a blanket, that sort of thing," Barclay said. "But in terms of overall criticality towards the next space station mission and survival of the element, that sort of thing, this is a pretty complex mission." The day after the fourth spacewalk, Atlantis will undock from the space station. With pilot Frick at the controls, the shuttle will fly one and a quarter loops around the station before leaving the area for good. Landing is targeted for just before 2 p.m. on April 15. "I think there's probably a great chance we'll have a lot of fun," Ross reflected. "We've already got some things planned for the (station) crew to be able to enjoy some quiet times together. And just being there is enough fun for me. "I mean, it's an incredible experience. God created a beautiful place for us to live on and to be able to observe from 200-and-some miles up, it's just [an] incredible experience. Living in zero gravity, being able to share that with ten other individuals is something that's very, very hard to express to other people, the impact of that." =================================================================== Weather 'iffy' for launch (04/03/02) 10:25 a.m., 04/03/02, Update: Weather outlook now 60 percent 'go' Forecasters now say there's a 40 percent chance of showers and possible thunderstorms that would delay the shuttle Atlantis' planned liftoff Thursday afternoon on a space station assembly mission. The odds improve to 80 percent "go" Friday and drop back to 60 percent favorable should launch slip to Saturday. Out at launch pad 39B, shuttle workers have finished loading Atlantis' internal tanks with liquid oxygen and hydrogen to power the ship's electrical generators and are pressing ahead with the launch countdown. If late afternoon thunderstorms develop as expected, lightning and the threat of hail could force engineers to delay retraction of the shuttle's protective gantry. But no major problems are expected. NASA managers, meanwhile, plan to meet at 4 p.m. today to discuss the results of additional overnight work to assess the health of Atlantis' external tank umbilical door drive motors. During recent tests of a drive assembly aboard the shuttle Endeavour, a motor took longer than expected to close one of the doors. While no one thinks Atlantis has a problem - it's drive motors worked properly during normal tests before the shuttle was moved to the pad - NASA managers want to make absolutely sure before clearing the ship for launch. The external tank doors are latched open during launch so propellant flowing through 17-inch feed lines from the external fuel tank can pass into the shuttle's engine compartment. After the tank is jettisoned, the doors, covered with heat shield tiles, are closed. The motor issue requires resolution because the consequences are extreme. Should a door fail to close for any reason, the heat of atmospheric entry would result in destruction of the orbiter. That said, engineers believe Atlantis' motors are, in fact, perfectly healthy. They just needed a bit of extra time to go through all the paperwork on other motors in the shuttle inventory. Atlantis' launch time will not be revealed by NASA until 24 hours before liftoff. Until then, NASA will only say launch is targeted between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Thursday. But widely available satellite tracking software indicates Atlantis must take off around 5:13 p.m. Thursday in order to rendezvous with the international space station on Saturday. As soon as NASA makes that official, we will update the flight plan on the Current Mission page to reflect the actual target launch time. We will post the NASA television schedule as soon as it is released. 5:30 p.m., 04/03/02, Update: NASA releases official launch time NASA officially unveiled the shuttle Atlantis' launch time today. Weather permitting, the shuttle will blast off at 5:12:51 p.m. Thursday, within a few minutes - in at least one case, within a few seconds - of the moment predicted earlier by widely available satellite tracking software. The actual 10-minute launch window will open at 5:07:52 p.m. and close at 5:17:50 p.m. Earlier concern about suspect drive motors in the shuttle's propellant feed line covers was resolved at an afternoon management review. NASA's television schedule of major mission events will be available shortly. An updated flight plan, based on the official launch time, will be posted later this evening. The latest version of the flight plan includes several significant changes and readers are encouraged to check the Current Mission page later tonight for the posted revision. =================================================================== Shuttle launch delayed by hydrogen leak at pad (04/04/02) 08:35 a.m., 04/04/02, Update: Shuttle fueled for launch Working by remote control, engineers began pumping a half-million gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen rocket fuel into the shuttle Atlantis' external tank at 8:05 a.m. today, setting the stage for a launch attempt at 5:12:51 p.m. Forecasters continue to predict a good chance - 40 percent - for afternoon showers and thunderstorms, but there are no technical problems of any significance at pad 39B and the astronauts plan to begin strapping in just before 2 p.m. Under a new post-Sept. 11 security policy, NASA television coverage will not begin until the crew is already at the pad, at 2 p.m. The crew's traditional breakfast "photo op," suit donning and walk out to the van that will carry them to the pad will be taped and replayed after NASA television coverage begins. Following a standard countdown, the shuttle's crew cabin hatch will be closed around 3:15 p.m. A 10-minute hold at the T-minus 20-minute mark will begin at 3:58 p.m. and end at 4:08 p.m. A final adjustable hold at the T-minus nine-minute mark will begin at 4:19 p.m. If all goes well, the countdown will resume at 5:03:51 p.m. for a liftoff at 5:12:51 p.m. 09:50 a.m., 04/04/02, Update: Propellant leak at pad forces launch delay NASA managers called off today's attempt to launch the shuttle Atlantis on a space station assembly mission after a leak developed in a hydrogen fuel vent line. The countdown was halted at 9:27 a.m. and launch is off for at least 24 hours and possibly longer, depending on what it might take to repair the vent line. NASA has not announced a launch time for Friday, but based on the space station's orbit, liftoff would be targeted for around 4:50 p.m. The forecast calls for an 80 percent chance of good weather. Additional details about today's scrub will be posted here as soon as possible. A reliable source said engineers believe a weld broke on a hydrogen line on the shuttle's mobile launch platform. Witnesses said they could see a liquid gushing from a pipe visible on the side of the platform, but it wasn't immediately clear what that might have been. Stay tuned! 11:00 a.m., 04/04/02, Update: Dramatic video of launch pad leak A dramatic hydrogen leak today at the shuttle Atlantis' launch pad, apparently the result of a cracked weld, spewed a cloud of extremely flammable vapor into the morning air, but luckily for NASA the hydrogen did not ignite and engineers quickly stopped the flow of propellant. The incident occurred at 9:27 a.m., about an hour-and-a-half after engineers began the three-hour process of fueling Atlantis for launch on a space station assembly mission. Video from remotely operated cameras on the east side of the pad showed a cloud of vapor spewing around the circumference of a white hydrogen vent line on the side of the shuttle's mobile launch platform. Hydrogen can "auto ignite" when released directly into the atmosphere, but that did not occur today. No one was at the pad, a normal safety precaution during shuttle fueling, and so no lives were ever at risk. The launch pad is equipped with a sophisticated fire supression system, but even so, it would appear NASA dodged a bullet this morning. Launch of the 109th shuttle mission is officially off for at least 24 hours, but NASA managers say privately a Friday launch attempt is not being considered. It will take engineers several hours to completely drain Atlantis' external tank and gain access to the vent line for an up-close inspection. NASA's mission management team will meet at 1 p.m. to discuss the problem, repair options and when Atlantis might be ready for another launch attempt. A new conference to discuss the issue is planned for 2:30 p.m. 02:00 p.m., 04/04/02, Update: Launch off until Sunday and possibly longer Launch of shuttle Atlantis will be delayed until at least Sunday, NASA managers say, and that's assuming a leaking hydrogen vent line on the ship's mobile launch platform can be repaired in place and that tests can be completed in time to ensure the line's integrity. If the line cannot be welded in place, a second option calls for installing a clamshell fixture around the break to seal it. In that case, launch likely would be delayed to Monday or Tuesday. A third, worst-case scenario, would call for engineers to disconnect a 60-foot section of the vent line and to repair it on the pad surface. It's not yet clear how long that might take. A NASA briefing is scheduled to begin shortly and an update will be posted as soon as possible thereafter. 03:30 p.m., 04/04/02, Update: NASA downplays threat from hydrogen leak The shuttle Atlantis' launch on a space station assembly mission is off until at least Sunday - and possibly longer - because of a dramatic hydrogen leak at the launch pad that raised the heart rates of reporters, if not shuttle engineers. The leak occurred shortly after 9 a.m., about an hour and five minutes or so after engineers began fueling Atlantis for a 5:13 p.m. launch attempt. A few moments after switching from slow fill to fast fill, an alert engineer monitoring video cameras focused on the pad saw a cloud of vapor erupt from a hydrogen vent line. The 16-inch aluminum line is one of two that carry excess hydrogen gas from the shuttle's external tank to a "flare stack" near the pad where the gas is released into the atmosphere in a controlled burn. The line only carries gas, not supercold liquid hydrogen. "It was during fast fill on the hydrogen side that a facility vent line leaked," Leinbach said. "This was on the side of the mobile launcher, it's a pipe external to the mobile launcher. All leaking gaseous hydrogen was vented to atmosphere, there was no problem with the vehicle itself, there were no leaks inside the mobile launcher." Video from remotely operated cameras on the east side of the pad showed a cloud of vapor spewing around the circumference of the double-jacketed vent line, presumably due to a cracked weld. The weld in question dates back more than 20 years and is a veteran of more than 80 shuttle fueling operations. "About a minute after he spotted the leak, we terminated flow on hydrogen," Leinbach said. "We talked about the situation for another 12 or 13 minutes while we continued to load oxygen. But we determined very quickly the leak was way out of spec and we were going to have no launch attempt today." Hydrogen gas can spontaneously ignite in the atmosphere in concentrations greater than about 4 percent due to interactions with other components of the air. While the vapor leaking from the vent line appeared to be fairly dense, Leinbach said there were no sensors nearby to determine the actual concentration. In any case, no fires broke out and Leinbach downplayed the danger posed by the leak. "We didn't ever consider this a threat to the vehicle," he said. "Of course, during external tank load there's no one at the pad so there was never any safety issue with people. We just really don't feel it was an issue." He confirmed that engineers are studying three options for repairing the line. If enough room is available, technicians will grind down the crack, re-weld it and use X-rays or penetrating dyes to confirm the integrity of the seal. That's the best-case scenario, one that would result in a launch attempt as early as Sunday. A second, more complex, option calls for welding a clamshell-like sleeve around the crack. But that would add a day or two to the repair timeline. The worst-case scenario would require engineers to detach a 60-foot-long section of the vent line and lower it to the pad surface for repairs. The line then would have to be reattached and retested. When another launch attempt could be scheduled under that option is not yet clear. But no decision on which option to pursue is expected before Friday, after engineers have a chance to carry out a thorough inspection. Access to the crack, high above the pad on the side of the shuttle's mobile launch platform, is another issue. Under NASA's post Sept. 11 security plan, the agency will not announce a target launch time for Sunday or any other day, saying only that Atlantis will take off, if the pad can be repaired in time, between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. The exact launch time will be revealed 24 hours before takeoff. As reported here earlier, however, satellite tracking software shows a Sunday launch would be targeted for around 5:02 p.m. EDT. The launch time moves about 24 minutes earlier each day in accord with the space station's orbit. Assuming Atlantis gets off the ground Sunday, here's a rough timeline of major mission events (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DATE/EDT...DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/07/02 05:02 PM...00...00...00...STS-110 launch 04/09/02 11:38 AM...01...18...36...Station docking 12:47 PM...01...19...45...Hatch opening 04/10/02 11:22 AM...02...18...20...Spacewalk No. 1 begins to attach truss to station 04/12/02 10:52 AM...04...17...50...Spacewalk No. 2 begins 04/13/02 10:52 AM...05...17...50...Spacewalk No. 3 begins 04/15/02 10:52 AM...07...17...50...Spacewalk No. 4 begins 04/16/02 12:22 PM...08...19...20...Farewell ceremony 12:42 PM...08...19...40...Hatches closed 03:22 PM...08...22...20...Station undocking 04/18/02 06:52 AM...10...13...50...Begin deorbit timeline 10:54 AM...10...17...52...Deorbit rocket firing 11:59 AM...10...18...57...Landing A detailed flight plan for a Sunday launch is posted on the Current Mission page. NASA's television schedule will be released the day before launch, whenever that occurs. =================================================================== Launch delayed to Monday (04/05/02) Launch of the shuttle Atlantis on a space station assembly mission has been rescheduled for Monday afternoon to allow time for engineers to repair a leaking hydrogen vent line at the launch pad. NASA managers decided late Thursday to repair the crack by putting a clamshell-like sleeve around it and then welding the sleeve in place. That work, plus tests to confirm the sleeve is leak free, will delay launch to sometime between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Monday. The actual launch time will be announced 24 hours before liftoff, in keeping with NASA's post-Sept. 11 security policy. But the publicly announced launch time for Thursday was 5:13 p.m. EST. For space station missions, the launch time moves about 24 minutes earlier each day and that would lead to a launch around 4:37 p.m. EDT Monday, in close agreement with predictions made by satellite tracking software. The 16-inch hydrogen vent line, used to carry excess hydrogen gas from the shuttle's external tank to a "flare stack" near the pad, is located on the shuttle's mobile launch platform. The line ruptured about an hour and five minutes into the fueling process began Thursday morning. Engineers believe a decades-old weld cracked because of temperature-induced stress. The repair work is expected to take 12 to 16 hours to complete and if all goes well, the work will be done by 6 p.m. Saturday. While engineers probably could have finished the repair in time for a Sunday launch try, NASA managers decided to target Monday to provide a bit more time to handle any unexpected problems. The forecast for Monday calls for generally favorable conditions in Florida, although high winds could be a issue. Shuttle managers are more concerned about conditions at three shuttle landing sites in Spain and Africa. All three are forecast "no go" early next week and at least one must be available in case of an engine problem during ascent that might force the crew to make an emergency landing. NASA's newsroom will be closed Saturday and will reopen Sunday. A revised television schedule will be released Sunday afternoon. In the meantime, an updated version of the crew's flight plan, based on a presumed launch at 4:37 p.m., is posted below. Readers should keep in mind some times may change slightly based on the shuttle's actual target launch time and changes required by updated tracking of the station. That said, here are mission highlights at a glance (in EDT and mission elapsed time): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/08/02 04:37 PM...00...00...00...STS-110 launch 04/10/02 11:13 AM...01...18...36...Space station docking 12:22 PM...01...19...45...Hatch opening 04/11/02 05:52 AM...02...13...15...Station robot arm unberths S0 truss 06:52 AM...02...14...15...S0 installation begins 10:57 AM...02...18...20...Spacewalk No. 1 begins 04/13/02 10:27 AM...04...17...50...Spacewalk No. 2 begins 04/14/02 10:27 AM...05...17...50...Spacewalk No. 3 begins 04/15/02 11:42 AM...06...19...05...Crew news conference 04/16/02 10:27 AM...07...17...50...Spacewalk No. 4 begins 04/17/02 11:57 AM...08...19...20...Farewell ceremony 12:17 PM...08...19...40...Hatches closed 02:57 PM...08...22...20...Space station undocking 04/19/02 10:29 AM...10...17...52...Deorbit rocket firing 11:34 AM...10...18...57...Landing The complete flight plan is available on the Current Mission page. =================================================================== Welding repairs complete; high winds a concern (04/07/02) 02:30 p.m., 04/07/02, Update: Welding repairs complete; high winds a concern for launch Engineers successfully repaired a cracked weld in a launch pad gaseous hydrogen vent line Saturday, clearing the way for the delayed launch of the shuttle Atlantis Monday afternoon on a space station assembly mission. Launch is believed to be targeted for around 4:37 p.m. But high winds at the Kennedy Space Center could pose problems for an emergency return to launch site abort, prompting forecasters to predict a 40 percent chance of another delay. A launch attempt Thursday was called off just 90 minutes or so after engineers began pumping rocket fuel into Atlantis' external tank when a 16-inch-wide gaseous hydrogen vent line on the side of the ship's mobile launch platform ruptured. A weld dating back more than 20 years apparently cracked after repeated exposure to low-temperature hydrogen gas. NASA managers downplayed the threat from the resulting cloud of hydrogen gas, saying its low temperature made it look more dramatic in the much warmer Florida air than it actually way. In any case, engineers repaired the vent line, which carries excess hydrogen gas from the external tank to a nearby "flare stack," by welding a clamshell-like sleeve around it. The work was completed Saturday and testing (both X-ray and dye penetrant) confirmed the seal is tight, clearing the way for a second launch attempt. As usual, howevever, the weather is a major question mark. High winds are expected at the Kennedy Space Center Monday because of a pressure gradient between a high pressure system off the East Coast of the United States and a low pressure system over Texas. The Spaceflight Meteorology Group at the Johnson Space Center in Houston is predicting scattered clouds at 3,500 feet and 25,000 feet and seven-mile visibility. So far, so good. But the winds are predicted to be out of 130 degrees at 17 knots with gusts to 26. That would result in maximum headwinds at the Shuttle Landing Facility of just slightly below NASA's safety limit of 25 knots. As a result, forecasters at the Kennedy Space Center are predicting a 40 percent chance launch will be delayed. The forecast improves to 80 percent "go" on Tuesday and Wednesday. NASA managers will announce Atlantis' official launch time later this afternoon. At that point, we will update the flight plan already posted below and add the official NASA television schedule. 04:55 p.m., 04/07/02, Update: Official launch time released NASA announced the shuttle Atlantis' official launch time today: 4:39:31 p.m. Monday, a few minutes later than amateur satellite observers had predicted based on the international space station's known orbit. In keeping with a new post-Sept. 11 security plan, NASA will not release a shuttle's precise launch time until 24 hours before liftoff. Until then, the agency provides a four-hour launch period that, for Atlantis' mission, runs from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. daily. The actual launch window announced today opens at 4:34:31 p.m. Monday and closes at 4:44:30 p.m. The preferred launch time within that window is 4:39:31 p.m., close to the moment Earth's rotation carries pad 39B into the plane of the space station's orbit. The crew's flight plan has been recalculated to reflect the official launch time. Here are mission hightlights at a glance (in EDT and mission elapsed time): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/08/02 04:40 PM...00...00...00...STS-110 launch 09:40 PM...00...05...00...Crew sleep begins 04/10/02 12:07 PM...01...19...27...Space station docking 01:30 PM...01...20...50...Hatch opening 04/11/02 11:00 AM...02...18...20...Spacewalk-1: Egress and daily setup 03:40 PM...02...23...00...S0 truss activation 05:10 PM...03...00...30...Spacewalk-1: Airlock repressurization 04/13/02 10:30 AM...04...17...50...Spacewalk-2: Egress and daily setup 04:55 PM...05...00...15...Spacewalk-2: Airlock repressurization 06:35 PM...05...01...55...Reboost operations 04/14/02 10:30 AM...05...17...50...Spacewalk-3: Egress and daily setup 04:55 PM...06...00...15...Spacewalk-3: Airlock repressurization 05:40 PM...06...01...00...Reboost operations 04/15/02 11:40 AM...06...19...00...Crew news conference 04/16/02 10:30 AM...07...17...50...Spacewalk-4: Egress and daily setup 04:55 PM...08...00...15...Spacewalk-4: Airlock repressurization 04/17/02 07:15 AM...08...14...35...Reboost operations 02:35 PM...08...21...55...Space station undocking 04/19/02 03:10 AM...10...10...30...Crew wakeup 11:38 AM...10...18...58...Deorbit rocket firing (on orbit 170) 12:42 PM...10...20...02...Landing The complete flight plan is posted on the Current Mission page. The official NASA television schedule will be posted here shortly. =================================================================== Atlantis rockets into orbit (04/08/02) 07:50 a.m., 04/08/02, Update: Atlantis refueled for second launch try Engineers began refueling the shuttle Atlantis at 7:18 a.m. today, setting the stage for blastoff on a space station assembly mission at 4:39:31 p.m. Forecasters continue to predict a 40 percent chance of high winds that could force a second delay, but shuttle managers are hopeful the weather will cooperate. A launch attempt Thursday was called off after a decades-old weld in a 16-inch gaseous hydrogen vent line on the side of Atlantis' mobile launch platform cracked, allowing hydrogen gas to spew out. The line was repaired Saturday by welding a clamshell-like sleeve around the crack and no problems are expected today. The issue this time around is high winds. NASA's safety limits forbid a launch if the winds exceed 30 knots at the launch pad, if crosswinds at the shuttle's emergency landing strip are higher than 15 knots or if headwinds exceed 25 knots. The forecast for Atlantis' launch window calls for 30-knot winds out of 120 degrees at the launch pad - right at NASA's safety limit. At the runway, winds are expected to be out of 130 degrees at 17 knots with gusts to 26 knots. The crosswind component is just 9 knots or so, but headwinds will be right at the limit if the wind direction doesn't change. If it does, crosswinds could become a factor. NASA television coverage is scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. The STS-110 television schedule is posted below, along with a detailed flight plan. 01:40 p.m., 04/08/02, Update: Shuttle crew straps in Commander Michael Bloomfield and his six crewmates began strapping in aboard the shuttle Atlantis around 1:30 p.m. today, keeping their fingers crossed the weather will cooperate and permit a liftoff at 4:39:31 p.m. In keeping with NASA's new security policy, television footage of the astronauts suiting up and departing crew quarters was not carried live on NASA television. When NASA TV started up at 1:30 p.m., the astronauts were already at the pad and in the process of boarding the shuttle. There are no technical problems at pad 39B and the only issue remains the weather, with forecasters predicting high winds at the launch pad and at the shuttle's emergency runway. As of this writing, the winds are predicted to be right at NASA's safety limits for down-the-runway headwinds at the shuttle's emergency runway and at the pad itself. In other words, it's too close to call. Air Force F-15 fighter jets, meanwhile, forced a light plane to land at a small airport just west of the Kennedy Space Center after its pilot strayed into a no-fly zone surrounding the space center. The pilot apparently was not aware of the no-fly zone and immediately cooperated with instructions to land. 05:00 p.m., 04/08/02, Update: Atlantis roars into orbit Barely beating the clock, the space shuttle Atlantis rocketed away through a breezy afternoon sky today and set off on a four-spacewalk flight to attach a $790 million truss to the international space station that eventually will span the length of a football field. Running four days late because of a cracked launch pad hydrogen vent line, Atlantis roared to life and vaulted away from pad 39B at 4:44:19 p.m., nearly five minutes late because of a hastily corrected synchronization glitch with countdown control equipment on the ground. As it was, Atlantis lifted off with just 11 seconds left in its launch window. At the moment of liftoff, the station was sailing 220 miles above the North Atlantic Ocean, passing almost directly over the launch pad a few minutes before Atlantis took off. But it will take commander Michael Bloomfield and his six crewmates - pilot Stephen Frick, flight engineer Ellen Ochoa and spacewalkers Steven Smith, Rex Walheim, Jerry Ross and Lee Morin - two days to catch up with their quarry after lapping the station later tonight. Docking is expected around noon Wednesday. Ross, 54, set a new space record with Atlantis' ground-shaking liftoff, becoming the first human in history to blast off on seven space flights. The achievement came 41 years after cosmonaut Yury Gagarin became the first human in space and 21 years after the first shuttle flight April 12, 1981. "He's a hard worker," said 71-year-old astronaut John Young, an Apollo moonwalker and shuttle commander who was the first man to achieve the six-flight milestone. "He's been in this business a long time, he's done all these (spacewalks) and he's a great fellow. "I think it's just great that people get to fly in space more than we used to," Young, still an active astronaut, told CBS Radio. "I'd like to go back, but if I did it'd be very dangerous because my wife said if I went back up there she'd kill me." Atlantis made the climb to space using the power of three upgraded block 2 main engines, the end result of a billion-dollar post-Challenger program to improve the safety and reliability of the hydrogen-fueled powerplants. Built by Boeing's Rocketdyne division, the block 2 engines feature the addition of high pressure hydrogen fuel pumps built by Pratt & Whitney of West Palm Beach, Fla. Working in concert with Pratt & Whitney oxygen pumps already in service, along with a host of other improvements, the block 2 engines reduce the odds of a catastrophic shuttle failure from 1-in-438 to 1-in-483. "These pumps are fantastic," said shuttle program manager Ronald Dittemore. "We've basically eliminated the welding inside the pump that we could not inspect. We've made the pump beefier, more robust. And because of that, we've accepted about a 300-pound weight increase per pump. But we wanted to do that, intentionally sacrificing some performance, to improve our safety." The engines weigh just 7,748 pounds each, yet generate 490,847 pounds of thrust each during normal operation. One of the new hydrogen pumps alone generates as much horsepower as 28 locomotives, or 70 horsepower per pound. An aircraft jet engine, in contrast, generates about three horsepower per pound. "Some of the failures we have seen on this new pump (during testing) would have taken out a pump and an engine in the past," Dittemore said. "With this new pump, it just keeps on chugging. It'll run to MECO (main engine cutoff) or it'll have a graceful shutdown. So just subjectively, it's a tremendous improvement in our safety." Today's launch was the first using a shuttle equipped with a cluster of three block 2 engines following two earlier flights that successfully tested block 2 engines one at a time. While engineering data is not yet available, all three of Atlantis' engines appeared to work flawlessly during today's climb to space. The goal of the 109th shuttle mission is to attach the $600 million S0 (pronounced S-zero) truss to the international space station. S0 is the first of nine truss elements that will be bolted together over the next two years to form the structural backbone of the station. Four huge sets of solar arrays eventually will be attached to the truss, two at each end, providing the power needed to operate the completed station's research gear and life support systems. S0 will anchor the entire truss, attaching directly to the top of the U.S. Destiny laboratory module. Power lines from the outboard solar arrays will feed through S0 into the station, as will ammonia coolant lines leading two and the outboard radiators that will keep the station's electrical systems from overheating. S0 is equipped with four computers, two laser ring gyros and GPS antennas for on-board navigation, 664 feet of ammonia coolant lines, 10 miles of electrical cabling, 971 electrical connectors and complex power control and conditioning equipment. The 44-foot-long S0 truss also is equipped with a $190 million Canadian-built rail car that will roll along tracks running the length of the completed truss, carrying the station's Canadarm 2 robotic crane to various work sites as required to install new equipment or to help spacewalking astronauts make repairs. "Once we add the mobile berthing system to the mobile transporter on the next flight (in early June), it will allow the robotic arm to travel the length of the truss," said space station flight director Robert Castle. "So we can actually grapple things, roll along the length of the truss and install things at the end of it." In fact, the solar array wings - all two acres of them - and other critical outboard power and cooling systems cannot be installed without using the Canadarm2 on its mobile platform. And the first step on the road to completing the station's initial assembly is installation of the S0 truss. "The truss element has been called a spacewalker's playground and we've nicknamed the underwater mockup of it the 'jungle gym,'" said Dina Barclay, lead spacewalk officer at the Johnson Space Center. "It's 44 feet long, it has more than 150 astronaut hand holds, almost 50 sockets for foot restraints, has more than 1,000 spacewalk actuated connections and has more than 50 (electronics) boxes that can be changed out. "The truss plays a vital role in the space station's future," she added, "because future truss segments will attach to either side of it and all the avionics and ammonia cooling that go up to and come in from the other truss segments go through S0 for power distribution and cooling for the modules, which is where the astronauts live and work. "The mobile transporter also plays a key role," Barclay said. "On the next mission (in late May), the next part of the mobile servicing system will come up and it will mount on top of the mobile transporter to give Canadarm2 a mobile platform to finish the space station assembly." If all goes well, Atlantis will dock with the station Wednesday. Standing by to welcome Bloomfield and company aboard will be Expedition 4 commander Yury Onufrienko, Carl Walz and Daniel Bursch. Launched Dec. 5, the Expedition 4 crew plans to remain in orbit through early June. Ochoa, operating the station's robot arm, plans to attach S0 to Destiny Thursday morning, using a claw-like device on the lab module to temporarily hold it in place. Smith and Walheim then will stage a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk to firmly lock two of the truss' structural attachment bipods in place. Ross and Morin, both grandfathers, will complete S0's structural attachment during the mission's second spacewalk Saturday afternoon. Two more spacewalks are planned to prepare the Canadarm2 space crane for its eventual attachment to the mobile transporter and to perform "get-ahead" tasks for upcoming assembly missions. "I can't verify it, but I believe this will be the first time two grandfathers will perform a spacewalk together," Bloomfield joked before launch. "Steve Smith likes to refer to them as the 'Silver Team.'" If all goes well, Atlantis will return to Earth on April 19. =================================================================== Atlantis closes in on station; Bursch letter (04/09/02) 12:15 p.m., 04/09/02, Update: Astronauts check out spacesuits, close in on station The Atlantis astronauts, steadily closing in on the international space station, spent the morning checking out the pressure suits they'll use during four spacewalks to attach a huge truss to the orbital complex and unlimbered the shuttle's robot arm for routine tests and a payload bay survey. The space station's larger Canadarm2 crane will be used to attach the S0 truss to the station Thursday and to maneuver the spacewalkers about during the installation process. But the shuttle's robot arm will be used to provide camera views of installation activity and, during the third spacewalk, it will play a primary role while the astronauts re-wire Canadarm2 for future use on a mobile transporter that will creep back and forth along the completed truss. Other activities on tap today include checkout of the computerized space vision system that will be used by Canadarm2 operator Ellen Ochoa to precisely position S0 during installation; checkout of the emergency jetpacks that will be used during all four planned spacewalks; and checkout of the laser range finders and other tools that will be used during final approach to the space station Wednesday. At 11:44 a.m., Ochoa and Jerry Ross, the first man to fly in space seven times, were interviewed on NASA television by two Indianapolis television stations - Ross is an Indiana native - and The Associated Press. Ross is the seventh person to fly in space, a record that dominated the questioning. "It's actually kind of hard to believe I've been with NASA as long as I have and been given the opportunity to fly on so many different flights," said Ross, who became an astronaut in 1980. "The time has gone by very fast and I've enjoyed every minute of it." One reporter asked Ross, one of NASA's most respected and well-liked astronauts, if he felt like a "space hog" given that he's making his seventh flight while more than 60 astronauts are still awaiting their first launch. "Well, if you look at the ratio of time at NASA compared to the number of flights, I think it's about the same as most of the other people who have been flying in space and some of them are, in fact, even faster-paced than me. I feel like I've worked very hard and I feel like each of us earned our flights in space and if the other folks stick around as long and work as hard, hopefully they'll have the opportunity to fly at least as many times." Here is the crew's updated timeline for today, Flight Day 2, as uplinked from mission control (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/09/02 Tue 05:44 AM...00...13...00...Crew wakeup Tue 08:44 AM...00...16...00...Ergometer setup Tue 09:04 AM...00...16...20...Jerry Ross exercises Tue 09:14 AM...00...16...30...Airlock prepared for spacewalks/docking Tue 09:14 AM...00...16...30...NC2 rendezvous rocket firing Tue 09:39 AM...00...16...55...Robot arm (RMS) powerup Tue 09:44 AM...00...17...00...Spacesuit checkout Tue 09:54 AM...00...17...10...MAGR setup Tue 09:54 AM...00...17...10...Steven Smith exercises Tue 09:54 AM...00...17...10...RMS checkout Tue 10:39 AM...00...17...55...RMS payload bay survey Tue 11:09 AM...00...18...25...RMS powerdown Tue 11:24 AM...00...18...40...Stephen Frick exercises Tue 11:29 AM...00...18...45...Contingency water container setup Tue 11:44 AM...00...19...00...Media interview: Ochoa, Ross Tue 12:44 PM...00...20...00...Crew meal Tue 01:44 PM...00...21...00...Spacesuit jetpack (SAFER) checkout Tue 01:44 PM...00...21...00...Spacesuit prepped for transfer to ISS Tue 01:59 PM...00...21...15...Space vision system setup Tue 02:04 PM...00...21...20...Orbiter docking system ring extension Tue 02:29 PM...00...21...45...Space vision system checkout Tue 02:29 PM...00...21...45...Ellen Ochoa exercises Tue 02:59 PM...00...22...15...Spacewalk tool prep Tue 03:09 PM...00...22...25...Walheim exercises Tue 03:14 PM...00...22...30...Space vision system powerdown Tue 03:29 PM...00...22...45...Rendezvous tools checkout Tue 03:34 PM...00...22...50...Michael Bloomfield exercises Tue 04:09 PM...00...23...25...Spacesuit helmet cams checked out Tue 04:14 PM...00...23...30...Lee Morin exercises Tue 04:57 PM...01...00...13...NC3 rendezvous rocket firing Tue 08:44 PM...01...04...00...Crew sleep begins Tue 09:00 PM...01...04...16...Daily video highlights reel begins airing There are no technical problems of any significance and today's mission status briefing was cancelled. Looking ahead to Wednesday, a detailed space station docking timeline has been posted below. Revision B of NASA's TV schedule also is posted below, but for some reason, the EDT column is off by one minute. NASA presumably will correct this in the next revision. 02:35 p.m., 04/09/02, Update: Bursch describes life in orbit In an open letter to family members, colleagues and the public, space station astronaut Daniel Bursch, a father of four who is now more than 120 days into a planned six-month stay in orbit, provides a fascinating glimpse at what life is like aboard the international space station. Here are a few excerpts: Spending the Christmas holidays in space The holidays were a nice break from the rapid pace of a Shuttle mission (Bursch, Carl Walz and commander Yuri Onufrienko were launched Dec. 5). I kept thinking about what several experienced expedition crew members had told me; the Shuttle mission is a sprint, and the Station mission is a marathon. Of course, being away from family during the holidays is always tough. It was very hard for me to be away from my family, but I couldn't help but think of all of the service men and women that were away from their families as well. And I also couldn't help but think about the tens of thousands of people that were missing friends and family over the holidays because of the terrorist acts of September 11th. And for them there would be no future reunion. I suddenly felt very fortunate to have a healthy family on Earth, knowing that they were sharing the holidays with loved ones. We spent most of the holidays catching up on sleep, writing e-mail, watching movies and calling friends and family using an internet phone application that uses our high-data rate communication system, otherwise known as "Ku" (frequency band in which it operates). It was very special to be able to call family and friends, but what became most entertaining were peoples' reactions when we said we were calling from space! I didn't expect to get the chance to talk to so many visiting relatives of my friends on Earth! Food in space We have a combination of Russian and American food and it provides us with quite a large assortment. Yury said that our tastes would gradually change and he was right. The spicy food, like shrimp cocktail, is not so spicy anymore. The teriyaki chicken tastes just a bit different. I was used to tastes changing during Shuttle flights, but those changes I could associate mainly with how a "stuffy head" can affect your taste when you cannot smell as well. Also, some foods that we really liked on Earth are suddenly not appealing anymore. I am glad that we have such an assortment to choose from! Yury says that our tastes will continue to change. I still can't wait to try some pizza when we return!! Seeing Mt. Everest One morning I happened to be up early. I glanced at our world map and saw that we'd be passing near Mt. Everest soon. I checked the computer, realized that we were in an attitude that would allow me to open the window shutter and there was Mt. Everest! It almost seemed to jump out at me. The low sun angle (it was close to orbital sunrise) gave tremendous relief to the mountains. It was just one of those sights that will be forever burned into my brain! 'Flying' through the space station Flying through Station is more fun than I thought it would be. We fly like Superman from one end to the other, being careful to know when to slow down and what big pieces of structure to miss (if you hit something hard, it still hurts!). We get to know our favorite handrails and paths from one place to another. After a month I tried using the ceiling. It seemed as though I had discovered another new Station! Everything looked different from the ceiling view, and I discovered that in some ways it was a better route (better hand-holds, fewer obstructions)! It still is a little disorienting when I am upside down and try to instantly decide which way to turn, but I am learning! Another interesting trick is to "fly formation." Pick something to translate with, then let it go and fly on its "wing." You really have to watch out how fast you go - stopping can get pretty messy sometimes! My grandmother used to say "The faster I go, the behinder I get!" That is also true for flying in space! That idea came in handy during the EVA's. Getting along with crewmates One very important aspect of long duration space flight are the mental challenges associated with living in the same "can" with two other people. I finally realized the other day that living in the same enclosure with two other people for more than three months is a pretty unique experience. Working closely with someone is a big jump from an acquaintance. Living with someone is a big jump from working with them. And living and working together with only two other people for several months is yet another big jump. If you have a bad day, you can't just go for a walk. I have come to accept that all of us will have (and have had) good days and bad days. Frank Culbertson told us some good advice - some days you just need "to let go" - meaning (I think!!) that sometimes some things will get to you - but you have to let them go. And soon you will realize how insignificant they are and will probably laugh that they even bothered you in the first place. But I have also found that it is important to let the others know when something bothers you, because just like any other relationship - whether with a friend or spouse - if you let things go all the time, they will collect inside and always come out at the wrong time. So, the balancing act of life is the same in space as it is on Earth!! On being told the flight will be extended a month... We just got news that our Shuttle flight home has been delayed about one month. That should send us over the six-month mark and we should break Shannon Lucid's U.S. record of 188 continuous days in space. That feels nice to be able to share in a record - but I sure do miss my family. During a deployment in the Navy, it is difficult to return home, but it is always possible. It is definitely different when your only ride home is with a spacecraft that also happens to be your only lifeboat when the Shuttle isn't present. Again, though, I think of all the men and women serving our country that are deployed right now in far way places, and my job seems pretty easy. I also know that the immediate families of these people have perhaps the toughest job. And I know without a doubt that my wife has the toughest job between the two of us with three little ones at home! =================================================================== Shuttle Atlantis docks with space station (04/10/02) 08:10 a.m., 04/10/02, Update: Atlantis set for station rendezvous The Atlantis astronauts fired the shuttle's maneuvering rockets today to raise the low point of the ship's orbit by more than 100 miles, setting up a docking with the international space station around 12:06 p.m. The two spacecraft will be over south-central China, to the southwest of Shanghai, at the time of docking. The shuttle will approach the station from below, passing about 600 feet beneath the outpost before slowly looping up to a point directly ahead of the target. At that point, Atlantis will be oriented with its tail facing Earth and its payload bay facing the station. The station will be oriented with its long axis in the direction of travel. A pressurized mating adapter mounted on the forward end of the Destiny laboratory module will face Atlantis. Destiny, in turn, is attached to the U.S. Unity module, a multi-hatch gateway linking the lab to the rest of the station. Directly across Unity from Destiny is a pressurized mating adapter leading into the Russian Zarya propulsion and cargo module. Zarya, in turn, is attached to the Russian Zvezda command module at the aft end of the station's long axis. A Progress supply ship currently is docked to Zvezda's aft port while the on-board crew's Soyuz lifeboat is docked to a downward-facing hatch on the Zarya module. The Pirs airlock is attached to the nadir docking port at the forward end of Zvezda. Extending 90 feet up from the Unity module's zenith hatch is the Z1 truss and P6 solar array, which provides the bulk of the station's current power. The P6 array ultimately will be repositioned at the end of the station's main truss, the first element of which is being installed during Atlantis' mission. The station's Quest airlock module, which will be used for all four of the upcoming STS-110 spacewalks, is attached to Unity's right-side, or starboard, hatch. Positioned directly in front of the station's long axis, Bloomfield will manually guide Atlantis in so the docking system in the shuttle's cargo bay can mate with its counterpart on the pressurized mating adapter, or PMA. "We call it a V-bar approach," Bloomfield said, referring to the station's velocity vector. "We'll fly below the international space station and then we'll fly all the way around out into the front, into what we call the V-bar, but we're flying now out in front of the station. And then finally, we'll fly in on that V-bar until we dock. "It's been done before, it's proven, so there's not anything new on our flight and so you know if you do it right it's going to work," he said. "We're fairly confident it's going to work." Here is a detailed docking timeline (times are approximate; in EDT and mission elapsed time): EDT.......DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/10/02 08:52 AM...01...16...08...Sunset 08:55 AM...01...16...11...ISS in docking orientation 09:27 AM...01...16...43...Sunrise 09:45 AM...01...17...01...TI burn; begin terminal rendezvous phase 09:55 AM...01...17...11...Noon 10:24 AM...01...17...40...Sunset 10:46 AM...01...18...02...US solar arrays feathered 10:59 AM...01...18...15...Sunrise 11:02 AM...01...18...18...MC4 rendezvous burn 11:05 AM...01...18...21...Range: 1,500 feet 11:10 AM...01...18...26...Range: 1,000 feet 11:12 AM...01...18...28...KU to low power; range: 800 feet 11:15 AM...01...18...31...Range: 600 feet; shuttle directly below ISS 11:15 AM...01...18...31...Last time to be in "approach ready" config 11:18 AM...01...18...34...Range: 500 feet; start TORVA maneuver 11:20 AM...01...18...36...Range: 400 feet 11:28 AM...01...18...44...Range: 300 feet 11:28 AM...01...18...44...Noon 11:29 AM...01...18...45...Range: 310 feet; shuttle directly in front of ISS 11:32 AM...01...18...48...Range: 250 feet 11:33 AM...01...18...49...Last time to be in dock ready config 11:36 AM...01...18...52...Range: 200 feet 11:38 AM...01...18...54...Range: 170 feet 11:40 AM...01...18...56...Range: 150 feet 11:44 AM...01...19...00...Range: 100 feet 11:47 AM...01...19...03...Range: 75 feet 11:51 AM...01...19...07...Range: 50 feet 11:54 AM...01...19...10...Range: 30 feet; start stationkeeping 11:56 AM...01...19...12...Sunset 11:59 AM...01...19...15...End stationkeeping; push to dock 11:59 AM...01...19...15...TDRS-West acquisition of signal 12:04 PM...01...19...20...Range: 10 feet 12:05 PM...01...19...21...DOCKING 12:20 PM...01...19...36...Sunrise Once Atlantis is docked and hatches between the two craft are opened, Expedition 4 commander Yury Onufrienko and his two NASA crewmates - Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz - will welcome the shuttle crew aboard. Launched Dec. 5, Onufrienko, Bursch and Walz are four months into a planned six-month stay aboard the space station. The Atlantis astronauts will be their first visitors since setting up shop aboard the outpost. "They've been up there for more than 100 days now and I can only imagine what it would be like to be isolated up there for a hundred days and not have any other people to talk to," said Atlantis astronaut Jerry Ross. "So I'm looking forward to sharing some experiences with them and hoping they can enjoy that time together before we depart." After a brief welcoming ceremony and a safety briefing from Onufrienko, the astronauts will begin transfering equipment from the shuttle to the station. Ochoa and Bursch, meanwhile, plan to put the station's robot arm through its paces to make sure the Canadian-built crane will be ready for action Thursday, when it will be used to attach a 27,000-pound truss to the station. Revision C of the NASA TV schedule is posted below, along with the crew's flight plan. For readers interested in a bit more detail, here is the updated flight plan of today's activities as uplinked to the crew from mission control (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/10/02 Wed 04:44 AM...01...12...00...Crew wakeup Wed 06:14 AM...01...13...30...ISS: Daily planning conference Wed 06:34 AM...01...13...50...Group B computer powerup Wed 06:49 AM...01...14...05...Begin rendezvous timeline Wed 06:54 AM...01...14...10...Smith exercises Wed 07:24 AM...01...14...40...Ross exercises Wed 07:29 AM...01...14...45...NH rendezvous rocket firing Wed 07:49 AM...01...15...05...ISS: Walz exercises Wed 07:54 AM...01...15...10...Morin exercises Wed 07:54 AM...01...15...10...Spacesuit removal Wed 08:14 AM...01...15...30...NC4 rendezvous rocket firing Wed 08:14 AM...01...15...30...ISS: Bursch exercises Wed 08:24 AM...01...15...40...Walheim exercises Wed 09:14 AM...01...16...30...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Wed 09:45 AM...01...17...01...Terminal initiation burn Wed 10:24 AM...01...17...40...ISS: Crew meal Wed 11:19 AM...01...18...35...Begin approach timeline Wed 12:06 PM...01...19...22...ISS docking Wed 12:24 PM...01...19...40...Hard dock confirmed Wed 12:24 PM...01...19...40...PCS setup Wed 12:29 PM...01...19...45...Hatch leak checks Wed 12:44 PM...01...20...00...Group B powerdown Wed 12:54 PM...01...20...10...Post rendezvous laptop reconfiguration Wed 12:59 PM...01...20...15...ODS prepped for hatch opening Wed 01:04 PM...01...20...20...ISS in hatch opening attitude Wed 01:19 PM...01...20...35...Hatch opening Wed 02:04 PM...01...21...20...Handshake and welcoming ceremony Wed 02:14 PM...01...21...30...Safety briefing Wed 02:29 PM...01...21...45...Spacesuit reconfiguration pre-EVA Wed 02:29 PM...01...21...45...CGBA transfer Wed 02:29 PM...01...21...45...Transfer operations begin Wed 02:29 PM...01...21...45...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Wed 02:39 PM...01...21...55...TV cable routing check Wed 02:44 PM...01...22...00...Shuttle-ISS water transfers begin Wed 02:59 PM...01...22...15...Bloomfield exercises Wed 03:29 PM...01...22...45...Spacesuit transfer to airlock Wed 03:29 PM...01...22...45...ISS: Walz exercises Wed 03:39 PM...01...22...55...ISS robot arm survey Wed 03:59 PM...01...23...15...Frick exercises Wed 04:24 PM...01...23...40...Quest equipment lock prep Wed 05:09 PM...02...00...25...Spacewalk tools prepped Wed 05:14 PM...02...00...30...EVA camera setup Wed 05:29 PM...02...00...45...Power tool checkout Wed 05:44 PM...02...01...00...EVA-1: Procedures review Wed 08:44 PM...02...04...00...STS crew sleep begins 10:00 a.m., 04/10/02, Update: Shuttle begins terminal rendezvous sequence Shuttle commander Michael Bloomfield fired Atlantis' maneuvering rockets at 9:45 a.m. to begin the terminal phase of today's rendezvous and docking with the international space station. At the time of the terminal initiation, or TI, rocket firing, Atlantis was trailing the station by about 9.2 statute miles. The shuttle currently is about two miles below the space station, catching up at about 10 mph. Docking remains targeted for 12:06 p.m. 12:10 p.m., 04/10/02, Update: Atlantis docks with space station Shuttle skipper Michael Bloomfield guided Atlantis to a picture-perfect docking with the international space station today as the two spacecraft sailed 240 miles above southern China. The linkup occurred at 12:05 p.m. and if all goes well, hatches between the two spacecraft will be opened around 2:04 p.m. 02:10 p.m., 04/10/02, Update: Hatches opened A final hatch between the shuttle Atlantis and the international space station was opened at 2:07 p.m., about two hours after the two spacecraft docked, allowing the shuttle's crew to mingle with their station counterparts for the first time. Video from space showed Atlantis skipper Michael Bloomfield floating into the station's Destiny laboratory module, welcomed aboard by station commander Yury Onufrienko. Bloomfield's crewmates quickly followed. "We've got the entire crew together, it's great to see these guys, they look wonderful," Bloomfield radioed flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center. "And the station looks like it's in great shape." The astronauts then floated down to the Russian Zvezda command module for a safety briefing from Onufrienko before beginning work to test the station's robot arm and to transfer supplies, equipment and fresh water to the station from Atlantis. =================================================================== S0 truss attachd in first spacewalk (04/11/02) 12:30 a.m., 04/11/02, Update: Astronauts set for truss installation The Atlantis astronauts face their biggest challenge today: Installation of the 27,000-pound S0 truss atop the space station's Destiny laboratory module. The flight plan calls for shuttle astronaut Ellen Ochoa, operating the station's Canadarm2 space crane, to begin the installation process at 5:59 a.m., plucking the $600 million truss out of the shuttle's cargo bay. Once it is initially attached to Destiny using an interim claw-like clamp, astronauts Steven Smith and Rex Walheim will begin a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk to begin the process of firmly locking it in place and to connect electrical cables to power the heaters needed to keep sensitive truss components alive. The S0 truss is the first element in a beam that eventually will span the length of a football field. Two huge sets of solar arrays will be mounted on each end to provide the power needed to operate the station's research equipment and life support systems. Ammonia coolant will flow through S0 to and from radiators on outboard truss elements to dissipate the heat generated by the station's internal electronics. Today's installation of S0 carries a bit of additional drama because of recent problems with the Canadarm2 space crane needed to install it. Each of the seven joints in Canadarm2 is equipped with two redundant avionics "strings" used to remotely control joint drive motors, brakes and various other systems. One string is arbitrarily considered "prime" and the other "backup." During tests in early March, engineers discovered that one string was unable to release the brakes on the arm's wrist-roll joint. The redundant string had no such problems and using it, the joint works normally. But should a similar glitch occur during S0 installation, the arm's software would consider the joint failed and put the crane into so-called "safe mode." To prevent that possibility, engineers redesigned the trajectory the arm will follow during S0 installation to minimize use of the wrist-roll joint. In addition, Canadian programmers wrote a software patch to prevent the arm from going into safe mode if the currently healthy string suffers a wrist-roll avionics glitch. In a worst-case scenario, Smith and Walheim could use a power tool to manually rotate the stalled wrist-roll joint into the required orientation. The S0 truss has the misfortune of being saddled with a particularly utilitarian name, one that does little to convey the complexity of the structure or its critical nature. But Ben Sellari, NASA's S0 launch package manager, says S0 is "more than just a truss element that some people may generally think of as just a girder or a piece of structure." With more than 475,000 parts, S0 measures 44.2 feet long, about 14 feet wide and weighs 26,716 pounds. It is equipped with four computers, two laser ring gyros and GPS antennas for on-board navigation, 664 feet of ammonia coolant lines, 10 miles of electrical cabling, 971 electrical connectors and complex power control and conditioning equipment. In terms of sheer mechanical and electrical complexity, only the Destiny laboratory module can eclipse it. "All of the power distribution for space station, once we're in the assembly complete phase when we have our outboard arrays, will come through S-zero's switching units and be able to be distributed to the other modules, the other truss elements," he said. "It'll also provide us, for the first time, with a cross-strap capability so that if we were to lose a (solar array power) channel in one area, we could then augment that from another array channel through the switching unit." Major components mounted inside the S0 truss include: * Power distribution systems to handle the flow of electricity from the solar arrays into the space station * DC-to-DC converter units to step down solar array voltage to levels needed by the station's internal systems * Secondary power control and switching systems * Two computers to control systems inside the S0 truss segment * Two computers to control systems in future outboard truss segments * Global Positioning System antennas and two laser ring gyros to permit on-board U.S. determination of the station's orbit and orientation for solar array and antenna aiming * A three-switch video distribution system that will route television from all externally mounted cameras, including those on the Canadarm2, into the station or down to Earth * Strain guages, accelerometers and other instrumentation to monitor the truss's structural rigidity * Instrumentation to monitor the space environment, including radiation sensors The truss also features a $190 million mobile transporter that will creep along tracks running the length of the completed beam. The transporter eventually will carry the Canadarm2 crane to 10 different work sites for use attaching outboard truss and solar array elements. The S0 truss provides the structural attach points for the port and starboard - P1 and S1 - trusses that will be attached later this year, along with pass-through ammonia cooling interfaces. Utility trays on S0 will provide power, cooling and data to Node 2, a module virtually identical to the Unity already in place that will be launched later. That power then will be routed to international modules. Smith and Walheim will exit the station's Quest airlock module a few minutes after Ochoa gets S0 positioned for its initial capture. The primary goals of the spacewalk are to attach power lines and to permanently latch the truss in place, deploying two bipods on the forward face of the truss and bolting them to fittings on Destiny's hull. During a spacewalk Saturday, Jerry Ross and Lee Morin will deploy and attach two massive tripods on the aft-facing side of S0 to complete the truss' mechanical attachment. "Our busiest day by far is flight day four, the day after we rendezvous and the first EVA," commander Michael Bloomfield said before launch. "S0 has a timeline on it, a lifetime, once we take it out of the payload bay it's got a 16-hour clock and once that 16 hours expires, then the possibility exists that we could do damage to S0 because it got too cold. So that's the clock we're running against where we have to get power on it. "If we start getting behind, we have a second set of cables up there called LTA cables, which is launch-to-activate, which is basically a way to bypass the normal way of hooking up S0 and give us power to the critical boxes just for a short amount of time," he said. Smith, wearing a spacesuit with red stripes around the legs, is a veteran of five previous spacewalks while Walheim, wearing an unmarked white suit, will be making his first such excursion. Smith will deploy the telescoping struts making up the forward bipods and Walheim will "rigidize" them like the legs of a camera tripod and bolt them to fittings on Destiny's hull. Smith, meanwhile, will open a trap door near the center of S0 and float part way into the truss to loosen a set of clamps allowing a large cable tray to deploy. The cable tray is on the aft side of S0 facing the Z1 truss. It is known as the "rat's nest." "It's buried between several modules and trusses and this area could be called the heart of space station for spacewalkers," said spacewalk planner Dina Barclay. "This is where many electrical and fluid lines mate between the modules." Before making any such connections, however, circuit interrupt devices, or CIDs, will be installed and activated like circuit breakers to ensure no electricity is flowing through any of the cables. Smith then will disconnect a set of diagnostic cables and release a pair of bolts to actually lower the tray before connecting 10 cables between the tray and connectors on Z1. On the front side of the truss, Walheim, occasionally assisted by Smith, will deploy another tray and make another 20 electrical connections. If time is available, Smith will install two more CIDs inside the truss to allow future assembly crews to "break electrical circuits in the middle and reduce the amount of space station power down that's required during later assembly missions," Barclay said. The final major goal of the first spacewalk is to power up the mobile transporter's internal heaters through a ribbon cable known as the trailing umbilical system. Working together, Smith and Walheim will electrically connect the TUS and install about 20 feet of cable in guides along the mobile transporter's rails. "So at the end of EVA-1, we've got two out of the four strut groups attached, so we're structurally in good shape for quite a while, we'll have all the power hooked up so all the avionics are up and working and we'll activate S0 and all the equipment on it that evening, after the crew finishes the EVA," said station flight director Robert Castle. Here is an updated flight plan of today's activity as uplinked to the crew from mission control (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/11/02 Thu 04:44 AM...02...12...00...Crew wakeup Thu 05:34 AM...02...12...50...Space vision system powerup Thu 05:39 AM...02...12...55...ISS: Daily planning conference Thu 05:44 AM...02...13...00...Station robot arm (SSRMS) grapples S0 truss Thu 05:59 AM...02...13...15...SSRMS unberths S0 truss Thu 06:14 AM...02...13...30...EVA-1: Preparations begin Thu 06:59 AM...02...14...15...SSRMS S0 installation begins Thu 07:09 AM...02...14...25...EVA-1: 10.2 psi depressurization Thu 07:14 AM...02...14...30...Morin exercises Thu 07:44 AM...02...15...00...ISS: Onufrienko talks to Russian reporters Thu 09:04 AM...02...16...20...EVA-1: Spacesuit purge begins Thu 09:09 AM...02...16...25...EVA-1: Airlock repress to 14.7 psi Thu 09:19 AM...02...16...35...EVA-1: Spacesuit prebreathe Thu 09:39 AM...02...16...55...Lab cradle assembly claw engages S0 truss Thu 09:44 AM...02...17...00...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Thu 10:19 AM...02...17...35...EVA-1: Depress Thu 10:29 AM...02...17...45...SSRMS ungrapples S0 truss Thu 10:44 AM...02...18...00...SSRMS reconfigured for EVA support Thu 11:04 AM...02...18...20...EVA-1: Egress and daily setup Thu 11:49 AM...02...19...05...EVA-1: Walheim attaches forward S0 bipod struts Thu 01:09 PM...02...20...25...EVA-1: Smith deploys aft tray Thu 01:49 PM...02...21...05...EVA-1: Walheim installs starboard avionics Thu 01:59 PM...02...21...15...EVA-1: Smith assists with avionics install Thu 02:19 PM...02...21...35...EVA-1: Smith continues aft tray deploy Thu 03:19 PM...02...22...35...EVA-1: Smith configures circuit interrupt device No. 7 Thu 03:19 PM...02...22...35...EVA-1: Walheim Installs port avionics Thu 03:39 PM...02...22...55...EVA-1: Smith assists with avionics install Thu 03:44 PM...02...23...00...SO activation Thu 03:59 PM...02...23...15...EVA-1: Smith configures circuit interrupt device No. 8 Thu 03:59 PM...02...23...15...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Thu 04:19 PM...02...23...35...EVA-1: Smith and 2 install TUS zenith cable Thu 04:44 PM...03...00...00...SSMRS reconfigured Thu 04:49 PM...03...00...05...EVA-1: Cleanup and airlock ingress Thu 04:49 PM...03...00...05...Bloomfield exercises Thu 05:14 PM...03...00...30...EVA-1: Airlock repressurization Thu 05:59 PM...03...01...15...Frick exercises Thu 06:34 PM...03...01...50...ISS: Daily planning conference Thu 08:44 PM...03...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins Revision D of the NASA television schedule is posted below, along with a detailed mission flight plan. 06:50 a.m., 04/11/02, Update: Station arm begins truss removal Astronaut Ellen Ochoa, assisted by station astronaut Daniel Bursch, is in the process of pulling the 27,000-pound S0 truss from the shuttle's cargo bay. The crew is running a bit behind schedule due to minor snags achieving a good lock on the truss with the Canadarm2 spacecrane. The robot arm appears to be working normally now as Ochoa slowly lifts the huge truss from the shuttle's cargo bay. Astronauts Steven Smith and Rex Walheim, meanwhile, are continuing preparations for a spacewalk later this morning to latch the truss to the top of the Destiny laboratory module and to make critical electrical connections. That work is proceeding smoothly. The spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 11:04 a.m., but it could slip a few minutes depending on how long it takes Ochoa to get the S0 truss in place atop Destiny. 09:45 a.m., 04/11/02, Update: Truss attachd to station The S0 truss was moved from the shuttle Atlantis' cargo bay to the top of the space station's Destiny lab module this morning, kicking off a busy day of work to firmly bolt the 27,000-pound truss to the outpost. Held in place by the station's robot arm, the S0 truss was latched in place using a claw-like device atop the lab module. But this is a strictly temporary mounting, designed to hold the truss in place until astronauts Steven Smith and Rex Walheim can deploy and bolt down structural supports later today during a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk. Smith and Walheim currently are inside the station's Quest airlock module, completing an oxygen pre-breathe procedure to flush their bodies of nitrogen. That's a standard precaution to prevent the bends when working in NASA's low-pressure space suits. The astronauts are running about 25 minutes ahead of schedule and flight controllers expect them to begin today's spacewalk around 10:40 a.m. 11:00 a.m., 04/11/02, Update: Spacewalk begins Astronauts Steven Smith and Rex Walheim switched their spacesuits to battery power at 10:36 a.m., officially beginning a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk. The spacewalkers currently are setting up portable foot restraints and arranging the tools they'll be using shortly to begin bolting down the S0 truss. "Welcome to spacewalking, buddy," Jerry Ross, a veteran of seven spacewalks, called out from the shuttle's flight deck. "Hey thanks. Amazing!" rookie spacewalker Walheim replied. "The solar arrays look awesome with the sun at this angle, don't they?" Smith observed a few moments later as the shuttle and space station sailed into sunset over central Russia. "Sure do. S-zero looks beautiful," Walheim said. "Looks like it's in its right place," Smith joked. "Upside down, though." 02:30 p.m., 04/11/02, Update: Truss firmly attached; astronauts make cable connections Spacewalkers Steven Smith and Rex Walheim deployed and bolted down two bipods today to firmly lock the 27,000-pound S0 truss in place atop the space station's Destiny laboratory module. The two struts of each bipod extend from the truss and meet at attachment plates on Destiny's hull. Walheim, making his first spacewalk, had no major problems bolting the struts in place to accomplish one of the major goals of the spacewalk. "OK, we're going for bolt four," Smith said as Walheim begin tightening up the fourth and final bolt on the starboard bipod. "OK, now I'm getting good turn counts," Walheim said, watching the digital display on his power nut driver. "OK, 14 and a half," Ross reminded. "Hey Rex. Good job," Smith called. "Welcome to the fraternity." "We're going to put in for your iron workers card here soon," Ross quipped. The astronauts also are deploying cable trays on the truss to connect various electrical cables and ammonia coolant lines. While most of the work has gone smoothly, they ran into problems getting a tray on the aft face of the truss deployed. After making a second attempt, and applying a bit me muscle power, they finally succeeded. "Let me get in my foot restraint here again," Smith said, as the astronauts prepared to pull on the tray in unison. "OK ready. Hold on... one, two, three..." "Got it!" Walheim exclaimed. "Got it," Smith agreed. "Hot dog!" "Great work, guys. You're the men. Stanford and Cal, working together," one of Atlantis astronauts said, joking about the collage backgrounds of the spacewalkers. For readers scoring at home, Smith earned a pair of master's degrees at Stanford while Walheim did his undergraduate work at the University of California at Berkeley. Walheim, making his first spacewalk, has clearly been impressed by the view from 240 miles up, frequently taking a moment to marvel at the world passing by below. "Wow, look at that sunrise," he said at one point. "The moon's just coming over the horizon at the same time as the sunrise. Spectacular." "Great view, huh?" veteran spacewalker Jerry Ross asked from Atlantis' flight deck. "Unbelievable." "Wall to wall earth," Ross agreed. "Enjoy these opportunities, Rex, and take some mental pictures," he said a few moments later. "It's amazing," Walheim laughed. "Just amazing." 05:30 p.m., 04/11/02, Update: Spacewalkers running behind schedule Running behind schedule, astronauts Steven Smith and Rex Walheim have been told to skip a few low-priority tasks and to press ahead with a few final chores before calling it a day. The spacewalk originally was scheduled to last six-and-a-half hours but it now appears the excursion will run at least an hour longer than that. As of 5:30 p.m., the spacewalk had been underway six hours and 54 minutes. It likely will not be over until around 7 p.m. Overall, Smith and Walheim have completed all of their high-priority objectives, securing the S0 truss to the international space station and connecting the electrical cables needed to power up its systems. But they ran into several snags along the way and while they were successfully resolved, the astronauts lost time along the way. Smith even had to return to the station's airlock shortly after 5 p.m. to recharge his spacesuit's oxygen supply. But none of the problems was serious and the deferred tasks - installation of two circuit breakers - will be picked up during a subsequent spacewalk. 06:30 p.m., 04/11/02, Update: Spacewalk ends; truss activation in work Astronauts Steven Smith and Rex Walheim began repressurizing the international space station's Quest airlock module at 6:24 p.m., officially ending a seven-hour 48-minute excursion to attach and electrically activate the $600 million S0 truss. This was the 35th spacewalk devoted to space station assembly and maintenance since construction began in late 1998. Including today's work, 29 NASA astronauts, five Russian cosmonauts and one Canadian have logged a total of 215 hours and 53 minutes building the international outpost. Flight controllers, meanwhile, are working through a complex checklist to power up critical heaters and other systems on the S0 truss. So far, no major problems have been encountered. A NASA status briefing to discuss today's spacewalk and the S0 installation is expected within the hour. 08:00 p.m., 04/11/02, Update: NASA managers elated with smooth truss installation Despite a few bumps along the way, the Atlantis astronauts and their space station colleagues successfully attached a 27,000-pound truss to the orbiting outpost today, accomplishing the primary goal of the 109th shuttle mission. Atlantis astronaut Ellen Ochoa and station engineer Daniel Bursch used the lab's Canadian-built robot arm to mount the S0 truss atop the Destiny laboratory module, clearing the way for two spacewalkers - Steven Smith and Rex Walheim - to lock it down and wire it up during a seven-hour 48-minute spacewalk. As the spacewalk was concluding, engineers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston began directing power to the truss, activating computers, heaters and other equipment needed to bring the massive component to life. To everyone's delight, the systems powered up normally, without any significant glitches. "The truss on orbit right now is in an excellent condition, an excellent posture to be ready to go into the remainder of this flight," said Ben Sellari, the STS-110 launch package manager. "I couldn't be happier. We accomplished all of our major objectives on EVA-1. "For almost a year now we've been advertising to management and here recently to the public that we knew this was going to be a difficult flight, we knew EVA-1 was going to be a difficult hill to climb," he added. "To say tonight that we accomplished all of our major objectives on that EVA is something to be very proud of. It wasn't an easy task at all, we knew there would be bumps along the way. But it was excellent work by everybody and a real pleasure to see it operate." Smith and Walheim deployed two massive bipods on the front face of the S0 truss and bolted them to plates in Destiny's hull, providing enough structural rigidity to hold the truss solidly in place during shuttle dockings and undockings. Two large tripods assemblies will be deployed from S0's aft face during a spacewalk Saturday to complete the beam's attachment. S0 is the backbone of a truss that eventually will span some 356 feet, anchoring huge solar arrays on each end and ammonia radiators closer in. The bipods and tripods on S0 provide the structural support necessary to anchor the completed truss and keep it rigidly attached during station reorientation maneuvers and the comings and goings of space shuttles and Russian spacecraft. "The S0 is structurally sound," Sellari said. "Our activations are underway. All of the S0 components on the truss itself are going through the final throes of activation, the mobile transporter will be next. So shortly, we'll be able to turn off our LTA clocks, or launch-to-activation clocks, on the S0 truss element and we're just in great shape for the remainder of the mission. Dina Barclay, lead spacewalk officer for mission STS-110, was equally thrilled at the success of today's excursion by Smith and Walheim. "A lot of people were watching today as Ellen installed the truss and then as Steve and Rex began its assembly," she said. "We're pleased with the crew's performance, and that's to put it mildly. We have a lot of smiling engineers in mission control right now." The astronauts will take a bit of a break Friday, transferring oxygen and nitrogen from the shuttle to tanks on the Quest airlock module, transferring equipment and supplies to the station and participating in round-robin media interviews. On Saturday, Lee Morin and Jerry Ross plan to stage the mission's second spacewalk to install the aft-facing tripod assemblies needed to complete S0's structural attachment. A third spacewalk, this one by Smith and Walheim, is on tap Sunday to rewire the Canadarm2 spacecrane for its eventual mounting on a mobile transporter that will run the length of the completed truss. After tests of the mobile transporter Monday, Ross and Morin plan to stage a fourth and final spacewalk Tuesday to perform a variety of "get-ahead" tasks for upcoming assembly missions. NASA's latest space station launch schedule, including changes made today during meetings at the Johnson Space Center, is posted below. =================================================================== Astronauts work inside station; transfer equipment (04/12/02) 09:15 a.m., 04/12/02, Update: Astronauts transfer experiments; plan Texas-style barbecue The combined crews of the international space station and the shuttle Atlantis are working through a busy day transferring experiment hardware into the lab complex, topping off its airlock oxygen and nitrogen tanks, exercising and chatting with reporters - including CBS Radio - about the progress of the mission. Late this afternoon, the astronauts will enjoy a few hours of off-duty time before spacewalks resume Saturday. Commander Michael Bloomfield said before launch the shuttle astronauts plans to entertain their station colleagues - Expedition 4 commander Yury Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz - with a Texas-style barbecue. "We got the afternoon off and what we'd like to do during that time is to get together with Dan, Yury, and Carl and have a good old barbecue," Bloomfield said. "It's about the time of the rodeo here in Houston, Texas, and both Dan and Carl enjoy the rodeo. So we're taking up some barbecue beef and we're taking up some handkerchiefs, and Jerry (Ross is) a country western fan so he's going to bring some music and we're going to try and have our own little party up there." Added robot arm operator Ellen Ochoa: "We do have a very busy timeline, but we are planning, of course, some time together with both crews, we have a couple of special meals planned where we've brought some special food and music, and I think we're all really looking forward to sitting down together and swapping stories." At 2 p.m., NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe will deliver what's being billed as a "major address" on the future goals and direction of the U.S. space agency. The speech will be carried live on NASA television and a story will be posted here later in the afternoon. In the meantime, here is a detailed timeline of today's activities in space as uplinked to the crews from mission control in Houston (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/12/02 Fri 04:44 AM...03...12...00...Shuttle crew wakeup Fri 05:14 AM...03...12...30...ISS crew wakeup Fri 06:54 AM...03...14...10...Lee Morin exercises Fri 06:59 AM...03...14...15...ISS: Daily planning conference Fri 07:19 AM...03...14...35...Nitrogen gas transfer operations Fri 07:24 AM...03...14...40...Jerry Ross exercises Fri 07:24 AM...03...14...40...Transfer operations resume Fri 07:49 AM...03...15...05...Oxygen gas transfer setup Fri 07:49 AM...03...15...05...Oxygen gas transfer operations Fri 07:54 AM...03...15...10...Pilot Stephen Frick exercises Fri 08:19 AM...03...15...35...ISS: PAO event Fri 08:24 AM...03...15...40...Protein crystal growth dewar transfer Fri 08:24 AM...03...15...40...BPS transfer operation Fri 08:24 AM...03...15...40...Steven Smith exercises Fri 08:39 AM...03...15...55...ISS: STES 7/10 Fri 08:39 AM...03...15...55...ISS: Carl Walz exercises Fri 09:09 AM...03...16...25...Michael Bloomfield exercises Fri 09:24 AM...03...16...40...Terminate oxygen transfer Fri 09:39 AM...03...16...55...Ellen Ochoa exercises Fri 09:39 AM...03...16...55...ISS: Danial Bursch exercises Fri 09:54 AM...03...17...10...ISS: Walz exercises Fri 09:59 AM...03...17...15...Spacesuit swap Fri 10:09 AM...03...17...25...Rex Walheim exercises Fri 10:29 AM...03...17...45...Spacewalk tools configured Fri 10:29 AM...03...17...45...Yury Onufrienko exercises Fri 10:44 AM...03...18...00...Spacewalk camera setup Fri 11:29 AM...03...18...45...Joint STS/ISS crew meal Fri 12:28 PM...03...19...44...CBS RADIO, MSNBC, WWJ-TV CREW INTERVIEWS Fri 12:49 PM...03...20...05...Transfer operations resume Fri 12:49 PM...03...20...05...Quest equipment lock prepped Fri 01:34 PM...03...20...50...Oxygen gas transfer Fri 01:44 PM...03...21...00...Spacewalk 2 procedures review Fri 02:00 PM...03...21...16...NASA ADMINISTRATOR'S SPEECH ON FUTURE GOALS Fri 02:44 PM...03...22...00...Spacewalk 3 procedures review Fri 03:00 PM...03...22...16...Mission status briefing on NASA TV Fri 03:44 PM...03...23...00...Crew off duty time begins Fri 03:44 PM...03...23...00...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Fri 06:29 PM...04...01...45...ISS: Daily planning conference Fri 08:44 PM...04...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins Revision E of the NASA television schedule is posted below. 01:30 p.m., 04/12/02, Update: Station astronauts describe life in orbit The crew of the international space station provided a glimpse of life in orbit today, describing attempts to toss foam balls the length of the outpost, watching "Alien" DVDs while jogging on their treadmill and the pleasure they all felt on welcoming their first visitors aboard. They also said they were pleased to hear that Barbara Morgan, an astronaut who once served as Christa McAuliffe's backup in the ill-fated "Teacher in Space" program, will finally get a chance to fly aboard a shuttle. Sources say NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe will announce Morgan's flight in a speech later today. "I think that's really fantastic and we wish her all the best," said station engineer Carl Walz. Expedition 4 commander Yury Onufrienko and NASA astronauts Daniel Bursch and Walz were launched to the station Dec. 5. Their mission recently was extended nearly a full month and they now plan to return to Earth in early June after six months in space. The crew of the shuttle Atlantis, which docked with the station Wednesday, are the station crew's first visitors in four months. "I'm just so happy to see other faces," Bursch told CBS Radio. "Nothing against Yury or Carl, but I think it's great! It's certainly true we have a lot more things floating around. In fact, the this morning something floated through the hatch and it took us awhile to figure out who's it was." In a letter to family members, friends and the public, Bursch said earlier this week he particularly enjoyed zooming the length of the space station in his spare time. "What we've been trying - and I haven't been too successful so far - is that we have some foam balls that we try to throw the length of the station and we really haven't been too successful so far. That's kind of what we do for fun. Of course, we play with our food like every good astronaut, Carl's great on the keyboard - he has a keyboard up here that he plays - and we also watch movies." Asked by another reporter what sort of movies are on board, Bursch said: "We happen to have all the "Alien movies," so I've watched those. And I kind of thought the best one was the first one and it kind of went downhill from there. But the DVDs are a lot of fun, we watch them while we're running." Later today, the combined station-shuttle crews will enjoy several hours of off-duty time. Shuttle commander Michael Bloomfield plans to serve up barbecue beef with corn. Spacewalker Jerry Ross will add a bit of atmosphere with a selection of country western CDs. "We've been awful busy the last couple of days and we've sort of been eating at odd times, trying to keep up with the work," Walz said. "But we're looking forward to a little time to relax together before the next couple of EVAs." Astronauts Steven Smith and Rex Walheim staged the first of four spacewalks Thursday to attach a huge truss to the space station. Veteran Ross and rookie Lee Morin will venture out Saturday to continue the job. A third spacewalk is on tap Sunday and a fourth on Tuesday. Thursday's successful excursion was the 35th devoted to space station assembly. In years past, NASA managers warned that station construction represented a "wall" of EVA challenges. Smith said today the wall is still there, but NASA has improved training procedures and facilities to properly prepare construction crews for the damands of the job. "The wall is here," he said. "We have several EVAs we're going to do this year, we set a record last year. As we've proven several times in the last year, we've got the procedures in place and the facilities and the people. I'm not sure if you followed our EVA yesterday, but we got everything done we'd hope to. We got a couple of curve balls thrown at us by the hardware and the procedures were in place to solve those. So it was a 100 percent successful day." Asked what makes walking in space so enjoyable, Ross said it was "the idea that you're a human being in your own little spacecraft and you're using your own intelligence and your own hands to do things that are so incredible and so important for the future of mankind." "Add to that the beauty of what you're doing, the incredible sights, a sunrise or a sunset every 45 minutes and the fact that you're going across the surface of the Earth at such a great clip that if you look away for too long, you'll miss entire continents." Ross is NASA's most experienced spacewalker, a veteran of seven flights - a first in space history - and a veteran of seven spacewalks totaling 44 hours and 11 minutes. Smith currently is No. 2 on the spacewalk experience list with 43 hours and 21 minutes in six excursions. "I've been very fortunate to have this opportunity, both to be in space - not to mention being on the international space station - and then the icing on the cake is the opportunity to do two EVAs with no less than the king of EVA himself, Jerry," said Morin. "I'm very grateful for that opportunity." And finally, in case anyone is wondering, Walz and Bursch have already taken care of their taxes. "My wife took care of that and we already have an extension," Bursch said. Walz' wife "got one of the tax programs and she filled it out and took care of it all," he said. "She's sort of in charge while I'm gone." 05:30 p.m., 04/12/02, Update: Teacher finally gets her shot at space NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe unveiled a new education initiative today, promising to launch teacher-turned-astronaut Barbara Morgan in 2004, 18 years after the shuttle disaster that killed school teacher Christa McAuliffe and six crewmates. Morgan, an elementary school teacher from McCall, Idaho, was McAuliffe's backup for the ill-fated Teacher in Space program, which was cancelled in the wake of the Challenger accident. But Morgan never gave up her dream of completing McAuliffe's work and in January 1998, she was selected as a full-time astronaut. Today, O'Keefe announced Morgan will finally get her chance to fly in 2004, after initial assembly of the international space station is complete. "It is fitting that Barbara Morgan be the first educator to complete this mission," O'Keefe said today. "It's been 16 years, it's time. But she's particularly unique because she trained with the Challenger crew and was Christa McAuliffe's backup. "Since the Challenger accident, she has worked with NASA and countless science organizations, keeping Christa McAuliffe's inspiration and the dream of an Educator in Space program alive." Morgan, a 50-year-old mother of two, will not be the only teacher in space. She will simply be the first. O'Keefe said NASA and the Department of Education will implement a national recruitment program in the next few months to find more qualified educators interested in working in space. The goal is to attract more high school students to careers in math, science and engineering. Referring to the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century, O'Keefe said "the U.S. need for the highest quality human capital in science, mathematics and engineering is not being met. ... We must raise levels of math, science and technology literacy throughout our society." One way to do that, O'Keefe said, is to make "science and discovery, exploration and research cool." "If we don't motivate our youngest generation now - in kindergarten and through high school - there's is little prospect this generation will choose to pursue scientific disciplines later." Unlike the original Teacher in Space program McAuliffe and Morgan were selected for, O'Keefe said the new program is not "a one-shot deal" and that any educator selected as an astronaut will have to be "proficient, trained and competent to handle all the other important mission objectives that every astronaut has." But they also will be expected to teach from space in some capacity. "Barbara Morgan is well on her way to space," O'Keefe said. "NASA and the children of the world look forward to wishing Barbara a hearty Godspeed as she lifts off to begin these most important missions at long last." Morgan was working Friday in space station mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, relaying instructions to the crew aboard the international space station. As such, she was not immediately available for comment. Station astronaut Carl Walz, however, told CBS Radio earlier in the day that her assignment was "fantastic and we wish her all the best." =================================================================== Second EVA completes truss attachment (04/13/02) 12:45 a.m., 04/13/02, Update: Astronauts gear up for second spacewalk Rookie astronaut Lee Morin and Jerry Ross, NASA most experienced shuttle flier and its most veteran spacewalker, are gearing up for a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk today to finish bolting a 27,000-pound truss section to the international space station. The work is scheduled to begin with airlock egress at 10:34 a.m. During a spacewalk Thursday by Steven Smith and Rex Walheim, the $600 million S0 truss was mounted atop the Destiny laboratory module and bolted in place with a pair of bipods on its front face. During today's excursion, Ross and Morin will deploy and lock down two massive tripod assemblies on its back side to complete the job. The bipod struts "deploy out, attach to the lab, there's an expanding collar that allows their length to change," said flight director Robert Castle. "So they attach them to the lab and then tighten down the collar so the length can't change any more. So you wind up with a fairly rigid structural member when you're done." Ross and Morin also will remove the two large keel pins that helped anchor S0 in the shuttle's cargo bay for launch. The keel pins and two other components called drag links must be removed to allow a mobile transporter on the truss to creep along its tracks. The transporter eventually will be used to move the station's Canadarm2 space crane back and forth along the completed truss. During Thursday's spacewalk, Smith and Walheim unrolled a flat ribbon cable that will supply the transporter with power and relay data and video back to operators inside the station. Today, Ross and Morin plan to deploy a second cable to provide redundancy. "Lee and I will be putting down the large aft struts that attach S0 to the laboratory," Ross said in a NASA interview. "The front two struts are smaller struts - they only have bipods, two legs on the struts; the ones we have on the back are larger ones, and they have three struts, so they're tripod struts. "So we'll be putting those two on, which have more bolts on [them], they're beefier, and will be taking more of the loads. So we tell the other guys that we're doing the harder part of the job there!" "After that's complete, we will be then doing a series of other things," he continued. "There are two large keel pins that are on the forward face of S0, which are there to hold S0 in the payload bay and support it structurally during the launch environment. They're on the forward face, but that's also the face where the (mobile transporter's) railroad track is. So we have to remove those keel pins and a drag link, which is a support bar that holds the keel in place for the launch loads." Ross will remove a thermal cover from a DC-to-DC converter unit on the truss and "I'll also be putting a handrail onto the outside of the airlock, one that didn't fit properly on an earlier mission. I'll also be bringing a bag of five additional handrails around and stowing them for installation on the fourth spacewalk. "And then we'll be putting out the second of the two TUS (trailing umbilical system) ribbon cables attaching electrical power, redundant electrical power, to the mobile transporter." Ross is NASA's most experienced spacewalker, a veteran of seven flights - a first in space history - and a veteran of seven spacewalks totaling 44 hours and 11 minutes. Smith currently is No. 2 on the spacewalk experience list with 43 hours and 21 minutes in six excursions. "I've been very fortunate to have this opportunity, both to be in space - not to mention being on the international space station - and then the icing on the cake is the opportunity to do two EVAs with no less than the king of EVA himself, Jerry," said Morin. "I'm very grateful for that opportunity." Asked what makes walking in space so enjoyable, Ross said it was "the idea that you're a human being in your own little spacecraft and you're using your own intelligence and your own hands to do things that are so incredible and so important for the future of mankind." "Add to that the beauty of what you're doing, the incredible sights, a sunrise or a sunset every 45 minutes and the fact that you're going across the surface of the Earth at such a great clip that if you look away for too long, you'll miss entire continents." Here's an updated timeline of today's events based on changed uplinked to the crew from mission control (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/13/02 Sat 04:44 AM...04...12...00...STS/ISS crew wakeup Sat 05:44 AM...04...13...00...EVA-2: Preparations begin Sat 06:39 AM...04...13...55...EVA-2: 10.2 psi depressurization Sat 06:44 AM...04...14...00...ISS: Daily planning conference Sat 07:29 AM...04...14...45...ISS: Walz exercises Sat 07:49 AM...04...15...05...Ochoa exercises Sat 08:19 AM...04...15...35...Walheim exercises Sat 08:34 AM...04...15...50...EVA-2: Spacesuit purge Sat 08:39 AM...04...15...55...EVA-2: Airlock repressurized to 14.7 psi Sat 08:49 AM...04...16...05...EVA-2: Spacesuit prebreathe Sat 09:14 AM...04...16...30...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Sat 09:29 AM...04...16...45...Bloomfield exercises Sat 09:49 AM...04...17...05...EVA-2: Airlock depressurization begins Sat 10:04 AM...04...17...20...ISS: Bursch/CEVIS Sat 10:34 AM...04...17...50...EVA-2: Airlock egress and daily setup Sat 11:04 AM...04...18...20...EVA-2: EV4 installs aft starboard strut attachments Sat 11:04 AM...04...18...20...EVA-2: EV3 installs aft starboard MTS Sat 01:04 PM...04...20...20...EVA-2: EV4 installs port strut attachments Sat 01:04 PM...04...20...20...EVA-2: EV3 installs aft port MTS Sat 01:24 PM...04...20...40...ISS: Onufrienko configures autoclave Sat 02:34 PM...04...21...50...EVA-2: Drag links removed Sat 02:54 PM...04...22...10...EVA-2: Intall trailing umbilical (nadir) Sat 03:24 PM...04...22...40...EVA-2: Stow S0 truss keel pins Sat 03:34 PM...04...22...50...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Sat 04:24 PM...04...23...40...EVA-2: Cleanup and airlock ingress Sat 04:44 PM...05...00...00...ISS: Bursch exercises Sat 04:54 PM...05...00...10...EVA-2: Airlock repressurization Sat 04:54 PM...05...00...10...ISS: Walz/CEVIS Sat 04:59 PM...05...00...15...Frick exercises Sat 06:24 PM...05...01...40...Spacewalk tools prepped Sat 06:34 PM...05...01...50...ISS: Daily planning conference Sat 06:39 PM...05...01...55...Reboost operations Sat 06:44 PM...05...02...00...Quest equipment lock prepped Sat 08:44 PM...05...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins Revision F of the NASA television schedule is posted below. 10:15 a.m., 04/13/02, Update: Spacewalk begins to finish truss attachment Floating in the international space station's Quest airlock module, rookie astronaut Lee Morin and Jerry Ross, veteran of seven previous spacewalks, switched their pressure suits to internal battery power at 10:09 a.m., officially beginning a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk. The goal of the excursion, the second of Atlantis' mission, is to complete the structural attachment of a 27,000-pound truss section that was installed Thursday during a spacewalk by Steven Smith and Rex Walheim. Ross and Morin, both grandfathers, also will deploy a second ribbon cable that will route power to a mobile transporter. The transporter, similar to a high-tech railroad flatcar, eventually will creep along the completed truss, carrying the station's robot arm to various work sites. "Jerry and Lee are both grandfathers," said spacewalk planner Dina Barclay. "And performing a spacewalk is no easy feat, it requires mental and physical stamina. And these guys have it. To our team, it's just a fun piece of trivia and the only time it even comes up is when these proud grandpas pull out the photos." Shuttle skipper Michael Bloomfield said "I believe this will be the first time two grandfathers will perform a spacewalk together. Steve Smith likes to refer to them as the 'Silver Team.'" Morin is making his first spacewalk while Ross, veteran of a record seven space missions, is making his eighth. Going into today's outing, Ross had logged a record 44 hours and 11 minutes of EVA time in seven previous spacewalks. 10:50 a.m., 04/13/02, Update: Initial setup complete; astronauts begin tripod attachment EVA-2 elapsed time: 00:41 Jerry Ross and Lee Morin have completed their initial setup and are beginning work to deploy and bolt down a large tripod on the aft face of the S0 truss, the first of two needed to completely lock the truss in place atop the Destiny laboratory module. "How do you like this fraternity so far?" Ross asked Morin, making his first spacewalk. "It's pretty wild. I can feel the NBL (neutral buoyancy lab) divers around me in spirit, though." "That's for sure," Ross said. 11:45 a.m., 04/13/02, Update: EVA-2 elapsed time: 01:36 The spacewalkers are in the process of bolting down two tripods needed to complete the structural attachment of the S0 truss atop the space station's Destiny lab module. Ross and Morin have run into occasional problems loosening or tightening a few of the bolts needed to complete the attachment of the starboard tripod, but they appear to be making progress by changing torque settings on the power nut drivers used too firmly seat each bolt. Sticky nuts and bolts are not uncommon in this kind of work, usually the result of the temperature extremes in orbit. 02:25 p.m., 04/13/02, Update: Tripods in place EVA-2 elapsed time: 04:16 Jerry Ross and Lee Morin have completed work to bolt a pair of tripods in place, finishing the job of locking the S0 truss to me top of the Destiny lab module. The spacewalkers are just about right on schedule, now working to remove keel pins and support hardware used to mount the truss in the shuttle Atlantis' cargo bay for launch. 02:50 p.m., 04/13/02, Update: Video log EVA-2 elapsed time: 04:41 Video log: 02:40 p.m. through 02:55 p.m. - Spectacular shots of the S0 truss against the limb of planet Earth (best of day so far); motion shots from the helmet camera of Lee Morin as he removes a second launch support strut that is no longer needed. Jerry Ross is preparing to deploy a flexible ribbon cable called the Trailing Umbilical System, or TUS, to provide redundant power, video and data to the S0's mobile transporter. 05:40 p.m., 04/13/02, Update: Spacewalk ends with all objectives accomplished Astronauts Jerry Ross and Lee Morin began repressurizing the space station's Quest airlock module at 5:39 p.m., officially ending a seven-hour 30-minute excursion, the second of four planned for the shuttle Atlantis' mission. The third spacewalk is on tap Sunday morning and the fourth on Tuesday. During today's outing, Ross and Morin completed the attachment of the S0 truss by bolting two tripod assemblies in place. They also unreeled a redundant ribbon cable needed to power a mobile transporter mounted on rails on the front side of the truss. The only problem of any significance today involved a stuck bolt in a cable cutter in the reel of the transporter's redundant trailing umbilical system cable, of TUS. Engineers said the cutter could not fire on its own anyway, and that the bolt will be dealt with later in the mission. This was the 36th spacewalk since December 1998 devoted to space station assembly. As of today, 30 NASA astronauts, one Canadian and five Russians have logged 223 hours and 23 minutes of spacewalk time building the international outpost. Eleven of those 36 spacewalks have been staged from the space station with the rest from the airlocks of visiting shuttles. This was the fourth spacewalk that utilized the Quest airlock module. Ross, NASA's most experienced astronaut with a record seven flights to his credit, extended his spacewalk record to 51 hours and 41 minutes in eight EVAs. Steven Smith, who will venture back outside Sunday, is in second place with 43 hours and 21 minutes in six spacewalks. 06:50 p.m., 04/13/02, Update: Engineers say truss now solidly attached Engineers monitoring today's spacewalk from mission control at the Johnson Space Center say the 27,000-pound S0 truss carried aloft by shuttle Atlantis is now permanently attached to the international space station and able to withstand any expected structural loads. Even when the truss is completed, stretching 356 feet and carrying huge solar arrays and radiators. "It became truly a skyscraper in space," senior flight director Wayne Hale said of the station. "It was a very significant day for us as we completed the structural mating of the centerpiece of the truss for the station and set the stage for building and future expansion of the station to a complex that will extend beyond the length of a football field. "The S0 truss is now structurally in place and it can withstand the coming and going of all visiting vehicles and reboost of the station and it's poised to accept new truss elements and new solar array power generation elements, both this year and in the coming year. So we've marked a milestone and today everything has performed flawlessly." The $600 million S0 truss is the first of nine truss sections that ultimately will be bolted together to form a 356-foot-long beam. Huge solar arrays and radiators will be mounted on the truss to provide power and cooling for the space station. The entire truss attaches to the station through the S0 truss, which is mounted atop the Destiny laboratory module. During a spacewalk Thursday, Steven Smith and Rex Walheim bolted down a pair of bipod struts connecting the front face of S0 to the lab module. Today, Jerry Ross and Lee Morin completed the job, bolting down two sets of struts on the back side of the truss. They also installed a second ribbon cable to provide power to a compact $190 million flatcar that ultimately will carry the station's robot arm to various work sites on the truss. "We have completed all the module-to-truss strut attachments," said launch package manager Ben Sellari. "We are four strut groups out of four, all bolts engaged. What that means in the short term for us is that for this flight we are go for orbiter reboost, in either vernier or PRCS control, and after the shuttle leaves we'll be able to support regular station reboosts. "It also eliminates any further concern about EVA loads while working on S0 and it opens the door for us to do the mobile transporter tests in a few days. For the long term, S0 is now a permanent fixture aboard the international space station and we couldn't be happier. It meets all the structural requirements necessary to continue the phase three of assembly so I guess in a short word, S0 is open for business." During a spacewalk tomorrow, Smith and Walheim will remove launch locks holding the mobile transporter in place so it can be tested Monday. They also will reconfigure wiring to the station's robot arm so it can eventually operate from the top of the mobile transporter. =================================================================== Station arm rewired in third spacewalk (04/14/02) 07:30 a.m., 04/14/02, Update: Astronauts gear up for third spacewalk Astronauts Steven Smith and Rex Walheim are gearing up for a Sunday stroll in space to rewire the international space station's Canadarm2 space crane. The work will enable the arm to ride atop a mobile transporter on the newly installed S0 truss and to draw power from electrical sockets at various work sites. The robot arm currently draws its power from connections to the electrical system of the Destiny laboratory module. The goal of today's spacewalk is to connect the robot arm to power feeds on the S0 truss. The arm's redundant sets, or "strings," of avionics equipment will be disconnected and reconnected one at a time. "We really don't want to power down all of Canadarm 2 all at once, we're going to bring it down one redundant string at a time," Castle said. "So we'll power down one string, do the power reconfiguration, power that string up, verify it works, then we'll power down the other string of avionics and chance the power configurations there." The arm's redundant power lines will be connected to the truss at two points. While ground engineers test the first cable reconfiguration, Smith and Walheim will remove launch locks holding the mobile transporter in place. After making the second set of robot arm connections, the spacewalkers will split up and reposition tools while the ground runs another series of tests to make sure the crane is once again fully operational. The final task for the spacewalkers is to install a ladder-like "spur" between the Quest airlock and S0 to make it easier for future assembly crews to get up to the truss work sites. This will be the 37th space station assembly EVA since construction began in late 1998. Going into today's excursion, 30 NASA astronauts, one Canadian and five Russian cosmonauts have logged 223 hours and 23 minutes building the international outpost. Today's spacewalk is scheduled to last six-and-a-half hours. In a pre-launch NASA interview, Smith described the objectives of the mission's third spacewalk. "Spacewalk number three will involve the reconfiguration electrically of the space station arm, so it will be largely not usable during that spacewalk," Smith said in a pre-flight NASA interview. "Before we go outside, we will park the space station arm, or the 'big arm,' so that it's out of the way. Steve Frick, the pilot of Atlantis, will use the space shuttle arm to move me around. I will be on a robotic arm for the entire spacewalk and Rex will be the free-floater this time. "We have several tasks to do on that day, largely reconfiguring electrically the space station so that the space station robotic arm can eventually walk on to the S0 truss section. So, we will park that arm early, I will make several connections right at the front of S0 to the United States lab, then we will go underneath the U.S. lab and open up a panel there and work on some of the connectors that are there now. "The connector configuration there has always been temporary, and we will make it permanent so the space station's arm will have two power strings and have its power available no matter where it is on the space station. "As you may know, that space station arm can actually walk around the space station with both ends, so we'll provide power for it to be able to do that. So that's the main purpose. While we are letting the ground reconfigure electrically the arm, after we make those connections, we will release several launch restraint bolts that hold the mobile transporter, solidly, to the space station truss section during the launch." Once the launch locks are removed, the $190 million transporter will be free to creep along its rails Monday, when the astronauts plan to test the mobile flatcar. The transporter eventually will be used to carry the station's arm to various work sites on the truss to continue its assembly. "It's very exciting," Smith said. "On that day we will have a day off from doing spacewalks, but within the space station, working in concert with the ground controllers, they will actually move the mobile transporter for the first time. And we're all going to be watching from the televisions and from the space shuttle windows at that point. "But the point is to translate it to certain places on the space station truss. There are actually parking spots on the truss where (the Canadarm2) can stop and plug itself in to receive power and data, those are different stations that it can stop at. So the whole purpose of that task is to make sure that the train works so that the follow-on flights can allow the arm to walk on to that train." Here is an updated flight plan of the crew's activities as uplinked to the astronauts from mission control (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/14/02 Sun 04:44 AM...05...12...00...STS/ISS crew wakeup Sun 05:09 AM...05...12...25...Spacewalk camera setup Sun 05:44 AM...05...13...00...EVA-3: Preparations begin Sun 06:39 AM...05...13...55...EVA-3: 10.2 depressurization Sun 06:44 AM...05...14...00...ISS: Daily planning conference Sun 08:19 AM...05...15...35...Shuttle robot arm powerup Sun 08:34 AM...05...15...50...RMS positioned for egress Sun 08:34 AM...05...15...50...EVA-3: Spacesuit purge Sun 08:39 AM...05...15...55...EVA-3: Airlock repressurization to 14.7 psi Sun 08:49 AM...05...16...05...EVA-3: Spacesuit prebreathe Sun 09:14 AM...05...16...30...Morin exercises Sun 09:29 AM...05...16...45...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Sun 09:49 AM...05...17...05...EVA-3: Airlock depressurization begins Sun 09:59 AM...05...17...15...ISS: Bursch exercises Sun 10:34 AM...05...17...50...EVA-3: Egress and daily setup Sun 10:59 AM...05...18...15...ISS: Crew meal Sun 11:19 AM...05...18...35...EVA-3: EV2 configures LCA claw Sun 11:19 AM...05...18...35...EVA-3: EV1 reconfigures J300 connectors Sun 11:39 AM...05...18...55...EVA-3: EV2 installs CID 8 Sun 12:19 PM...05...19...35...EVA-3: EV2 assists EV1 Sun 12:19 PM...05...19...35...Ross exercises Sun 12:34 PM...05...19...50...EVA-3: Release MT latch restraint Sun 01:19 PM...05...20...35...EVA-3: EV1 reconfigures J400 connectors; EV2 assists Sun 01:19 PM...05...20...35...ISS: Bursch exercises Sun 01:59 PM...05...21...15...EVA-3: EV2 performs get-ahead tasks Sun 02:29 PM...05...21...45...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Sun 02:34 PM...05...21...50...EVA-3: EV2 assists EV1 with J400 connector Sun 02:39 PM...05...21...55...ISS: Walz exercises Sun 02:49 PM...05...22...05...EVA-3: Shuttle tool transfer Sun 03:39 PM...05...22...55...EVA-3: Airlock spur installation Sun 04:09 PM...05...23...25...EVA-3: Cleanup and airlock ingress Sun 04:09 PM...05...23...25...ISS: Walz exercises Sun 04:14 PM...05...23...30...Frick exercises Sun 04:54 PM...06...00...10...EVA-3: Begin airlock repressurization Sun 05:44 PM...06...01...00...Reboost operations Sun 06:59 PM...06...02...15...ISS: Daily planning conference Sun 08:44 PM...06...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins Revision F of the NASA television schedule remains the most current release. 10:15 a.m., 04/14/02, Update: Third spacewalk begins EVA-3 Elapsed Time: 00:27 Astronauts Steven Smith and Rex Walheim switched their spacesuits to internal battery power at 9:48 a.m. today, officially beginning the third spacewalk of the shuttle Atlantis' mission. They currently are setting up portable work platforms and getting their tools together before beginning work to reconfigure the wiring of the international space station's robot arm. The goal is to enable it to draw power from different sockets on the S0 truss installed earlier in the mission. The spacewalk began about 45 minutes ahead of schedule. 12:30 p.m., 04/14/02, Update: Initial rewiring of station arm complete EVA-3 Elapsed Time: 02:41 Spacewalkers Steven Smith and Rex Walheim have finished re-routing power to one of the two redundant sets of avionics that drive the international space station's robot arm. The arm is being rewired to permit it to draw power from the newly installed S0 truss instead of the Destiny laboratory module, which has provided the arm's electrical power to this point. While flight controllers worked to power up the first "string" of S0-driven avionics, Smith and Walheim began work to remove launch locks that held a mobile transporter in place on the truss during launch. The transporter eventually will be used to carry the Canadarm2 space crane to various work sites along the completed truss. When they finish removing and stowing the launch locks, Smith and Walheim will reroute power to the robot arm's second set of avionics to complete the crane's reconfiguration. So far, today's spacewalk is proceeding by the book without any major problems. 02:00 p.m., 04/14/02, Update: Arm rewiring complete EVA-3 Elapsed Time: 04:11 Steven Smith and Rex Walheim have completed work to re-wire the international space station's Canadarm2 space crane, allowing it to draw electrical power from the S0 truss installed earlier in the mission. They also removed launch locks holding a mobile transporter in place on the forward face of the truss. The transporter will be taken for a test drive Monday and if all goes well, Canadarm2 will be mounted atop the platform in June to continue assembly of the station's solar array truss. Today's excursion appears to be running fairly close to the crew's original schedule. If they keep up this pace, the spacewalk will end around 4:30 p.m. A few minutes before 2 p.m., the astronauts took a moment to marvel at the view from 240 miles up. "Is that the blue tongue of the Bahamas and Florida?," Smith asked. "That would be it," someone replied. "Look at that!" Smith exclaimed. "Cuba down there below us." "Yep. See that dark blue part, Rex, that kind of invades the rest of that green area?" "Oh that's beautiful!" Walheim exclaimed. "Look at that! That's incredible." "Yep. Boy, what a pass." 04:20 p.m., 04/14/02, Update: Spacewalk ends Astronauts Steven Smith and Rex Walheim began repressurizing the space station's Quest airlock module at 4:15 p.m. to officially end a six-hour 27-minute spacewalk, the third of four planned for the shuttle Atlantis' crew. During today's excursion, the astronauts rewired the station's robot arm, enabling it to draw power from the new S0 truss, and removed launch locks from a mobile transporter on the front face of the truss. The $190 million transporter, which eventually will be used to move the robot arm to different work sites on the truss, will be tested Monday when ground controllers command it to creep back and forth along S0. The spacewalk was relatively trouble free and the astronauts managed to stay on schedule most of the day. But work on the ground to check out the re-wired robot arm took a bit longer than expected. As a result, Smith and Walheim were told to skip a final planned task to install a so-called airlock "spur" to help future assembly crews make their way up to the truss. The spur will be installed during the current mission's final spacewalk Tuesday. This was the 37th spacewalk devoted to space station assembly. With its conclusion, 30 NASA astronauts, one Canadian and five Russian cosmonauts have logged 229 hours and 50 minutes building the international outpost. Of that total, 12 spacewalks totaling 62 hours and 35 minutes were staged from the international space station, including 36 hours and 48 minutes by on-board expedition crews. =================================================================== Mobile transporter overcomes hurdles, passes initial tests (04/15/02) 01:15 a.m., 04/15/02, Update: Astronauts set for mobile transporter tests The Atlantis astronauts will operate the first space railroad today, running a $190 million flatcar back and forth along 26 feet of track that currently leads nowhere. In fact, there's a 240-mile drop off on either end. But as NASA adds sections to the international space station's solar power truss, the flatcar eventually will creep the length of a football field, carrying the station's $600 million Canadarm2 space crane to work sites as required to continue the lab's assembly. "The mobile transporter is nothing more than simply a railroad car," said Atlantis skipper Michael Bloomfield. "There's actually a set of railroad tracks that will span the length of this truss once it's up there. And you have the robotic arm that's up on the international space station, and we want to be able to use this robotic arm, all the way out to both ends of the truss. "And so what the robotic arm can do is, it can actually grab on to a grapple that's on top of this mobile transporter and it can move from one end of the truss to the other. And so we can use it to transport, in the assembly phase, other truss sections to the end of the truss that's already built. Kind of like you're building a railroad, you run the locomotive out to the end of the track and then you lay more track and you keep going. That's exactly how we're going to build the international space station." The first section of the station's solar power truss was bolted to the top of the Destiny laboratory module during spacewalks Thursday and Saturday. The mobile transporter and the tracks it will creep along are mounted on the forward face of the $600 million S0 truss. During a spacewalk Sunday, astronauts Steven Smith and Rex Walheim removed launch locks that held the transporter in place during the shuttle's climb to space, clearing the way for "first motion" today. The 44-foot-long S0 truss is the central element in a nine-section beam that eventually will stretch 356 feet. Huge solar arrays will be mounted on each end and radiators will be deployed halfway out each side to keep the station's electronics cool. The truss was designed to be built using the station's robot arm, riding atop a mobile transporter that will run the length of the beam as it's being assembled. The completed truss will have 10 work sites where the arm can lock itself down and plug into power sockets and video distribution leads. The S0 truss, the 27,000-pound central element mounted atop the Destiny module, has two such work sites. During tests today, the astronauts will send commands from a laptop computer to move the transporter from its launch position to work site 4 on the starboard side of S0. From there it will move the other way to work site 5 on the port side and then back to work site 4. Total distance traveled will be about 71 feet. "A lot of the work is going to be behind the scenes," pilot Stephen Frick said in a pre-flight NASA interview. "While we're sleeping, the station flight controllers are going to be going through some very long checkout procedures of the mobile transporter to make sure everything's up and operating and ready when we're ready to move it. So they're going to have worked for hours before we even get ready to go. "And then Carl (Walz) and I are going to get on the PCS, the control software on the station, and we're going to command the mobile transporter to move from its launch site to two work sites. We have one called work site 4 and one called work site 5 on the S0 truss. "It's going to be exciting for us because it'll be the first time we'll get it to see it move," Frick said. "But I've got to say it moves at an inch a second, so I don't want people to get their hopes up too much about a NASCAR race up there on the truss." As it turns out, an inch per second is the design specification of the transporter when it is unloaded. Ben Sellari, the launch package manager for the S0 truss, said the speed will be even slower for the tests planned today. The transporter measures 102 inches by 107 inches and weighs 1,923 pounds. The transporter moves using a linear drive unit that "is basically like the motor, transmission and brakes in your car," Sellari said. "This is what makes the mobile transporter go. It has two drive devices on it that engage the rail and through friction, allow the mobile transporter to go up and down the rails." The friction is provided by five spring-loaded wheels. Power and telemetry is provided through two redundant ribbon cables that play out from reels on either side of the transporter. For the tests today, "our most important role up there is as a safety observer," Frick said. "The commands we're going to send could be sent from the station (but) we're actually going to send them from the shuttle on the station laptop. The reason we're going to be over there is because we can look directly out the overhead window and watch the mobile transporter as it moves. "The software has been checked out on the ground and it's worked very well. But it's never been done in space and if anything should happen that's unexpected, we want to be there, ready to just stop it and give us a chance to look at what happened. So really we're safety observers. We're going to command it to leave (the) launch site, translate across, stop at the next one, plug itself back in, and then we're just going to be watching it very closely to make sure it does exactly what we expect it to do." If all goes well, Canadarm2 will mount itself on the mobile transporter this summer, after delivery of a required mounting assembly in early June. Along with testing the mobile transporter, the astronauts plan to hold a traditional in-flight news conference today at 12:44 p.m. After that, the combined crews will enjoy a bit of off-duty time. Here is an updated timeline of today's activity as uplinked to the crew from mission control (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/15/02 Mon 04:44 AM...06...12...00...STS crew wakeup Mon 05:14 AM...06...12...30...ISS crew wakeup Mon 06:29 AM...06...13...45...Quest nitrogen top off Mon 06:34 AM...06...13...50...Morin exercises Mon 07:14 AM...06...14...30...ISS: Daily planning conference Mon 07:29 AM...06...14...45...Transporter (MT) moves to work site 4 Mon 07:49 AM...06...15...05...Spacewalk tools configured Mon 07:49 AM...06...15...05...Ochoa exercises Mon 08:19 AM...06...15...35...Transfer operations resume Mon 08:29 AM...06...15...45...MT moves from work site 4 to 5 Mon 08:29 AM...06...15...45...AMPEV modification Mon 08:59 AM...06...16...15...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Mon 09:29 AM...06...16...45...MS moves from work site 5 to 4 Mon 09:39 AM...06...16...55...Spacewalk camera setup Mon 10:09 AM...06...17...25...Spacesuit swap Mon 10:29 AM...06...17...45...Joint crew meal Mon 11:19 AM...06...18...35...EVA-4: Procedures review Mon 12:19 PM...06...19...35...Crew photo Mon 12:44 PM...06...20...00...Crew news conference Mon 01:14 PM...06...20...30...Robot arm (RMS) powerdown Mon 01:14 PM...06...20...30...Walheim exercises Mon 01:14 PM...06...20...30...Crew off duty time begins Mon 01:14 PM...06...20...30...Quest equipment lock prepped for EVA-4 Mon 01:59 PM...06...21...15...ISS: Bursch exercises Mon 01:59 PM...06...21...15...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Mon 02:04 PM...06...21...20...Smith exercises Mon 02:59 PM...06...22...15...ISS: Walz exercises Mon 03:09 PM...06...22...25...Ross exercises Mon 03:59 PM...06...23...15...Bloomfield exercises Mon 04:44 PM...07...00...00...Frick exercises Mon 05:54 PM...07...01...10...ISS: Daily planning conference Mon 08:44 PM...07...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins Revision G of the NASA television schedule is posted below. 08:50 a.m., 04/15/02, Update: Mobile transporter starts and unexpectedly stops Space station astronaut Carl Walz sent commands to start the lab's flatcar-like mobile transporter, moving it from its launch position on the S0 truss to a work site 20 feet away on the starboard side of the beam. As the transporter was latching itself down at the work site, however, control software suddenly halted the operation and "safed" the $190 million rail car because of a perceived problem of some sort. Engineers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston are running troubleshooting procedures, but as of this writing it's not known if the transporter has a real problem, whether the glitch can be resolved by adjusting the software's control parameters or whether some other factor might be in play. Such problems are not uncommon during initial tests of such complex hardware and plenty of time is available today to complete the planned tests. But engineers said a quick fix apparently was not in the cards and the astronauts were told to stand down while additional analyses are carried out. "It appears this is not going to be a quick answer," astronaut Frederick Sturckow radioed from Houston. "Robo (robotic officer) is taking a hard look at all the data and we're going to stand down from MT ops for just the time being and you're free to press on with other activities. We will call you just as soon as we have words on the MT situation." 09:50 a.m., 04/15/02, Update: Transporter tests on hold; may be deferred indefinitely Tests of the space station's new mobile transporter rail car are on indefinite hold while engineers in Houston evaluate what caused its control software to suddenly stop operations during a procedure to latch the flatcar down at a work site. The $190 million transporter successfully moved from its launch position on the S0 truss to a work site 17 feet away on the starboard side of the beam. That's when the glitch occurred. The transporter ultimately will be used to carry the station's robot arm to various work sites and it must be able to latch itself down to its rails with three tons of force to provide a stable platform for crane operations. As it was going through the latch-down procedure today at work site 4, one of two on the S0 truss, the transporter's control software detected a problem and shut the process down. Engineers believe the trouble may have started when small magnets used to provide information on the transporter's position on the rails shifted slightly in the weightlessness of space. The astronauts can send commands to manually latch the transporter in place, but engineers want to make sure they fully understand what happened before proceeding. In the meantime, additional tests are on hold and may be off for the day. "We're basically in a holding pattern, stopped midway latching down," said NASA commentator James Hartsfield in mission control "That's thought to be due to a condition in the automatic mode of the rail car when magnets moved slightly that provided a location indication. As the latches began to close, it just caused the sequence to stop; not a real problem for the transporter, but it would require a manual latching by the crew or by ground control that would then close the latches. Not a systems problem for the transporter, all believed to be in good operating condition on the railway system, but some learning (going on) as the software and automatic operations are used for the fist time in weightlessness." Engineers may elect to have the crew send commands to remotely latch the transporter in place at work site 4 and then simply leave it there. That's because the equipment needed to attach the Canadarm2 crane to the transporter, scheduled for launch in late May, must be installed at work site 4. That's where the transporter would have ended up today anyway after a normal test run. 11:45 a.m., 04/15/02, Update: Engineers manually operate cart latches Engineers at the Johnson Space Center believe the $190 million mobile transporter on the new S0 truss is healthy and operating normally. It appears, however, that an automatic procedure to latch the transporter down at one of two work sites on the truss failed because of erroneous data indicating the cart was not in the correct position. As a result, the software controlling the lock-down process ordered a halt. Engineers believe the erroneous position data was the result of tiny movements caused by the cart being weightless and floating every so slightly along its rails. That, in turn, caused sensors measuring the cart's location using magnets in its rails to generate data indicating a problem. Flight controllers are in the process of sending a long series of commands to back out of the automatic lock-down procedure and then to manually latch it in place. If all that goes smoothly, the cart will be unlatched again and the astronauts will be asked to continue their interrupted tests and checkout, sending it to the far end of the S0 truss and, ultimately, back to its starting point at the current work site. 03:00 p.m., 04/15/02, Update: Space railroad back in action Astronaut Carl Walz restarted rail service aboard the international space station today, sending a $190 million flatcar creeping down the length of the lab's new S0 truss, from one station to another, after tests were interrupted earlier in the day by a subtle glitch. The mobile transporter itself is working flawlessly, but the effects of weightlessness, which cannot be fully simulated on Earth, are interfering with the operation of sensitive position sensors that provide feedback on the cart's location. The problem only occurs during an automatic sequence to lock the mobile transporter down at a work site. Flight controllers are able to latch it in place by manually uplinking commands. "All the electronics, all the systems, all the software on the mobile transporter are working very well. There are no glitches," said Ben Sellari, the S0 launch package manager. "This is not a software problem. The system is operating exactly as we instructed it to. I think what we're finding out as we go through this is how the mobile transporter works in zero G." The transporter eventually will be used to carry the space station's Canadarm2 crane to 10 different work sites on the completed solar array truss. Two such work sites are available on the S0 truss element currently in place, one on each end of the 44-foot-long beam. The transporter is designed to latch itself down at each worksite with up to three tons of force to provide a stable platform for the crane during future operations when it will be used to move massive outboard truss elements and other components into place. The transporter is equipped with two magnetic sensors that detect the presence of a pair of magnetized strips at each work site. When both strips are detected, the transporter's control software knows it is properly positioned to being the latch-down procedure. But during today's initial operation at work site 4 on the starboard side of the truss, the sensors apparently lost contact with the strips as the latches engaged, presumably because the cart floated upward very slightly. After lengthy troubleshooting, engineers decided to order the latches to disengage and when they did, the correct position indicators reappeared. Confident the cart was in the proper position all along, controllers successfully sent commands to manually drive the latches closed to verify their operation. They then ordered the latches to disengage and Walz, sending commands through a laptop computer, ordered the transporter to move back down along the track to the far side of the truss to work site 5. Again, the movement itself was smooth and again, the position indicators lost lock as the latches were engaged by the automatic software sequence. Ground controllers took over the operation as before, sending commands to manually engage the latches, before having Walz send the cart back to work site 4 where it will remain until the next shuttle visit. "The mobile transporter, of course, is a very complex piece of machinery," Walz told . "I think it has some 20-odd motors that control its motion and also the latching systems. And when it did move, it was almost anticlimatic. It started to move very, very smoothly - and of course, very, very slowly - and then it got into position and started to latch and something went wrong with the automatic software. Bt the ground was able to latch it manually." Asked if the initial failure made him a bit nervous, Walz said "we knew it wasn't going to keep rolling right off of S0. So we were fairly confident we were in a safe configuration. We called the ground and they started to do the troubleshooting. So our hearts really didn't skip a beat because we knew it wasn't going to continue moving. But we certainly were concerned, we always want to see the hardware check out the first time." Sellari said engineers ultimately may decide to modify the automatic sequence software to ignore the temporary loss of data from the magnetic sensors during the latch-down procedure. =================================================================== Fourth spacewalk successful; Morgan meets the press (04/16/02) 01:00 a.m., 04/16/02, Update: Astronauts set for final spacewalk The spacewalking "Silver Team" of the shuttle Atlantis - grandfathers Jerry Ross and Lee Morin - are set for a final spacewalk today, a catch-all excursion to tie up loose ends and leave the international space station ready for the next shuttle assembly mission in June. The spacewalk is scheduled to begin around 10:34 a.m. The primary goals of today's outing are to inspect the latching mechanisms on each end of the new S0 truss; to dress up a bit of loose insulation around a GPS antenna, to install a pair of spacewalk lights and to install energy absorbers on the station's mobile transporter rail car. "These are essentially large shock absorbers," said Dina Barclay, the mission's lead spacewalk planner. "Future spacewalkers will have hand-propelled carts to wheel down the truss rail and these energy absorbers allow for attachment of these carts to the mobile transporter and they also would cushion any collision between the cart and the transporter." Ross and Morin also plan to bring older tools back into the station for return to Earth, to finish retraction of a bolt in a cable cutter that only came partway out during a spacewalk Thursday and to carry out a detailed photo survey of the station's new truss. They will begin the spacewalk by installing a ladder from the Quest airlock to the S0 truss to make it easier for future assembly crews to reach various work sites. Morin also will deploy a spectrometer designed to sniff out ammonia coolant leaks in the completed truss. The ladder installation, removal of the partially withdrawn bolt and a few other tasks originally were planned for earlier spacewalks but they ended up getting deferred because of a handful of relatively minor problems. Ross, veteran of a world-record seven space flights, will be making his ninth spacewalk, a U.S. record. Going into today's excursion Ross had 51 hours and 41 minutes of spacewalk time in eight previous EVAs. He is second only to Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyov, who has 77 hours and 41 minutes over 16 spacewalks. Morin will be making his second EVA. Here is a detailed timelne of today's activity as uplinked to the crew from mission control (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/16/02 Tue 04:44 AM...07...12...00...STS/ISS crew wakeup Tue 05:44 AM...07...13...00...EVA-4: Preparations begin Tue 06:39 AM...07...13...55...EVA-4: 10.2 depressurization Tue 06:44 AM...07...14...00...ISS: Daily planning conference Tue 07:59 AM...07...15...15...ISS: Walz exercises Tue 08:04 AM...07...15...20...Frick exercises Tue 08:34 AM...07...15...50...EVA-4: Spacesuit purge Tue 08:34 AM...07...15...50...Ochoa exercises Tue 08:39 AM...07...15...55...EVA-4: Airlock repressurized to 14.7 psi Tue 08:49 AM...07...16...05...EVA-4: Spacesuit prebreathe begins Tue 09:04 AM...07...16...20...RMS powerup Tue 09:29 AM...07...16...45...ISS: Walz exercises Tue 09:44 AM...07...17...00...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Tue 09:49 AM...07...17...05...EVA-4: Airlock depressurization begins Tue 09:59 AM...07...17...15...Bloomfield exercises Tue 10:34 AM...07...17...50...RMS maneuver Tue 10:34 AM...07...17...50...EVA-4: Egress and daily setup (EV3: Ross; EV4: Morin) Tue 10:34 AM...07...17...50...EVA-4: EV3 (on SSRMS) checks starboard S0 ready to latch mechanism Tue 10:34 AM...07...17...50...EVA-4: EV4 assists (free floater) Tue 10:49 AM...07...18...05...Station robot arm video support Tue 11:49 AM...07...19...05...EVA-4: EV4 releases LCA guides; CIDs 7 & 8 ON; pip pin installation Tue 11:49 AM...07...19...05...EVA-4: EV3 installs node EVA light Tue 12:34 PM...07...19...50...EVA-4: Assemble portable work platform Tue 12:54 PM...07...20...10...EVA-4: EV3 installs lab EVA lights Tue 12:54 PM...07...20...10...EVA-4: EV4 deploys EV-CPDS; TUS-2 safing bolt Tue 01:39 PM...07...20...55...EVA-4: EV3 installs MT energy absorber Tue 02:39 PM...07...21...55...EVA-4: EV4 TGA DTO; photo survey Tue 02:39 PM...07...21...55...EVA-4: EV3 installs S0 handrail; GPS insulation tiedown Tue 02:54 PM...07...22...10...ISS: Bursch exercises Tue 03:54 PM...07...23...10...EVA-4: Shuttle tool transfer Tue 03:54 PM...07...23...10...ISS: Bursch exercises Tue 04:09 PM...07...23...25...EVA-4: Clean up and airlock ingress; CIDs 7 & 8 to OFF Tue 04:44 PM...08...00...00...RMS powerdown Tue 04:54 PM...08...00...10...EVA-4: Airlock repressurization begins Tue 05:09 PM...08...00...25...Shuttle repressurized to 14.7 psi Tue 06:29 PM...08...01...45...ISS: Daily planning conference Tue 08:14 PM...08...03...30...STS crew sleep begins Tue 08:44 PM...08...04...00...ISS crew sleep begins Revision H of the NASA TV schedule is posted below. 10:45 a.m., 04/16/02, Update: Final Atlantis spacewalk begins Astronauts Jerry Ross and Lee Morin began the fourth and final spacewalk of the shuttle Atlantis' mission at 10:29 a.m. today, switching their spacesuits to internal battery power before floating out of the space station's Quest airlock module. The spacewalk began roughly on time and it is expected to run about six-and-a-half hours. Ross and Moring currently are setting up portable work platforms and arranging their tools and tethers before installing a ladder-like "spur" between the airlock and the station's new S0 truss. Ross, riding on the end of the station's Canadarm2 space crane, also is taking a few minutes to test the operation of sensors that will be used on later flights to confirm the initial attachment of upcoming truss sections. 11:30 a.m., 04/16/02, Update: Airlock ladder installed EVA-4 Elapsed Time: 01:01 Jerry Ross and Lee Morin have completed work to attach a ladder-like "spur" from the space station's Quest airlock module up to the new S0 truss. The spur will be used by future assembly crews to easily make their way up to work sites on the spur in a more efficient manner. Ross currently is working to install the first of two new lights on the station's hull to improve visibility for future spacewalkers. Earlier, the astronauts tested the operation of sensors that eventually will be used to indicate when additional truss elements are properly positioned for attachment. All of the sensors checked out normally. 12:45 p.m., 04/16/02, Update: School teacher eager to fly in space Teacher-turned-astronaut Barbara Morgan does not view her role on a shuttle flight in 2004 as the fulfillment of Christa McAuliffe's legacy. Instead, McAuliffe's backup said today, the flight will mark the first step in an ongoing education initiative to attract more students to math, science and engineering. "I have been asked that question before, 'this will finally fulfill Christa's mission.' And I have to disagree with that because the job of education is never fulfilled," Morgan said. "Every year you have a new group of students, a new generation coming and there's no end point to education. Just like there's no end point to the universe or the kinds of things NASA's doing to explore that universe." McAuliffe was selected as the first "Teacher in Space" in 1985, selected from more than 10,000 applicants. Morgan was named McAuliffe's backup and the two went through payload specialist training with the crew of mission 51L, the ill-fated final flight of the shuttle Challenger. Following the Jan. 28, 1986, disaster that killed McAuliffe and her six crewmates, Morgan returned to her elementary school classroom in McCall, Idaho. But she never gave up her dream of flying in space and in 1998, former NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin announced that Morgan had been accepted as a full-time astronaut candidate. She then went through a year of training and is now a flight-qualified, full-time astronaut. But Goldin never named her to a specific mission. Then, on April 12, new NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe gave a speech at Syracuse University announcing a new initiative to recruit educator-astronauts and naming Morgan to a still-unspecified mission in 2004. Unlike the one-shot Teacher in Space program of the Reagan administration, O'Keefe said the new initiative is "a long-term" program in which educator-astronauts will work to excite "this next generation of Americans toward the exploration, missions and tasks that we believe are so important to what NASA does." "Fortunately we have among our important astronaut ranks someone who has worked her way through all of the initial training requirements and is immensely well qualified to take on the task of the first educator-mission specialist," he said. "Barbara Morgan was an astronaut candidate in 1998, has worked her way through that successfully, is now in the advanced training efforts and we're looking forward to her first flight shortly after the completion of the core elements of the international space station." Morgan thanked O'Keefe and said she was excited about finally getting her chance to fly in space. She said McAuliffe's mother, Grace Corrigan, also is "exited and happy and I'm glad for that." "I know she's calling my mom and saying, 'don't let her do it,'" Morgan joked. McAuliffe planned to teach two lessons from space aboard Challenger. Morgan's agenda is not yet set, but she said today lessons from space may not necessarily be part of her mission. "My very first goal is to be a good crew member, part of a team and to help ensure the team meets the mission success," she said. "I have no idea what flight I'll be assigned to, but there will be particular objectives for that mission and my goal is to do the best job I can to be a member of the team to make sure that happens. "My other goal is to learn as much as I can so I can bring that learning to students and teachers. And of course we'd like to involve as many students and teachers as we can." Any potential lesson plans will depend on the mission "because it's the goals of the mission that are the most important and I don't particularly see a mission for education," Morgan said. "I see a mission that education is a very important part of. "It may not be a lesson from space," she continued. "But it will definitely be something where teachers and students are connected and it will tie in with whatever's going on, the primary goals of the mission. One thing that I'm really excited about is ... what happens afterwards. That's what I'm looking forward to the most." The space shuttle is a much safer spacecraft than it was at the time of the Challenger disaster. But the risks are still relatively high, with a 1-in-483 chance of a catastrophic failure during ascent. Morgan said today she's aware of the risk, but doesn't dwell on it. "NASA is very concerned about safety and it's No. 1 in everything we do," she said. "And yes, it is risky business. But you do everything you can in your training, in the design, in the testing and in the multiple reviews that go on to minimize those risks. "My personal feeling about risks is that as teachers, we encourage students to take risks in our classroom. If you don't risk a little bit, you're not going anywhere. ... What we want them to see is people taking justified risks and not risk for risk's sake. "When you decide to come do something like this, you look at the pros, you look at the cons, you decide is what you're doing important and if it's important, it's worth doing. And I can't think of anything more important than our children and their future and the exploration of the universe. Once you make that decision, you do exactly what all the astronauts do, go forward with a happy heart and you don't dwell on risk. You train for it, you prepare for it but you don't dwell on it." And with that, Morgan went to work, walking over to the space station mission control center for her shift as a CAPCOM, relaying instructions and comments to the astronauts aboard the international space station. She gave O'Keefe a bit of on-the-job training at her console before settling in for another long day. 12:50 p.m., 04/16/02, Update: Spectacular spacewalk video Video log: 11:45 a.m. through 12:10 p.m. Astronaut Jerry Ross, making his record ninth and, in all likelihood, final spacewalk, was treated to a spectacular ride on the end of the station's robot arm today. Television from a camera mounted on his space helmet provided extraordinary views of the shuttle-space station complex as the Earth rolled by in the background. This is the best spacewalk video of the mission and readers with access to NASA television are encouraged to rewind their tapes and check it out. "This is what I call a room with a view," Ross said at one point. "Yes indeed," Daniel Bursch commented from inside the lab. "How many nights are we going to have?" Morin asked. "Unfortunately, not enough," Ross replied. "I mean how many day-night passes?" "Six hours." "Do we get paid for four days of work? "We couldn't pay them enough money for what we're getting to do," Ross observed. 04:05 p.m., 04/16/02, Update: Spacewalk winding down EVA-4 Elapsed Time: 05:36 Today's catch-all spacewalk is winding down, on schedule and with virtually all of the crew's objectives so far sucessfully completed. The only problem encountered today was ongoing trouble retracting a bolt in a cable cutter. The bolt was put in place as a launch restraint in one of two cable cutters that could be used, in a major malfunction, to chop ribbon cables running to the station's new mobile transporter rail car. The astronauts were unable to remove the bolt during an earlier excursion and spacewalker Lee Morin failed again today. While the recalcitrant bolt interferes with the action of the bolt cutter, it has no effect on the normal operation of the transporter and NASA managers are not overly concerned. Otherwise, the astronauts have completed their major objectives: Installation of a ladder from the Quest airlock module to the S0 truss to assist future spacewalkers; installation of two exterior lights; deployment and activation of a radiation monitor; installation of handrails on the S0 truss; attachment of shock absorbers on the mobile transporter; and re-installation of insulation blankets around a GPS antenna. Ross is making his ninth spacewalk. During his first mission in 1985, Ross and astronaut Woody Spring assembled simple beams in Atlantis' cargo bay that marked NASA's first attempts at space construction. Today, sailing 240 miles above the North Atlantic Ocean, Ross recalled that mission, sharing his memories with Morin and marveling at how far the agency has come. "It was a little over 16 years ago and I had another buddy out here doing a spacewalk in Atlantis' payload bay doing experiments looking into assembly techniques for international space station or any kind of space station," Ross said. "Is that right?" "Yeah. At the end of the second EVA, I said 'Woody, let's go build a space station.' Sixteen years later, here you and I are doing it." "Yeah, pretty amazing," Morin said. "Pretty amazing and it's also a pretty amazing facility. There will be some tremendous research for the benefit of everybody." 05:10 p.m., 04/16/02, Update: Spacewalk ends Jerry Ross and Lee Morin began repressurizing the space station's Quest airlock module at 5:06 p.m., officially ending a six-hour 37-minute spacewalk, the fourth and final excursion planned for the Atlantis mission. For the statistically minded, this was the 38th spacewalk devoted to space station assembly since December 1998. Thirty NASA astronauts, one Canadian and five Russian cosmonauts have now logged 236 hours and 27 minutes of spacewalk time building the international outpost. Of that total, 13 spacewalks totaling 69 hours and 12 minutes were logged by astronauts using space station airlocks. The rest were staged from the airlocks of visiting shuttles. The four spacewalks carried out during Atlantis' mission added up to 28 hours and 22 minutes. Jerry Ross, veteran of a world-record seven space flights, now holds the U.S. record for spacewalks with nine excursions totaling 58 hours and 18 minutes. Astronauts Steven Smith, also aboard Atlantis, is in second place with 49 hours and 48 minutes of spacewalk time. First place belongs to cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyov, who has logged 77 hours and 41 minutes of EVA time in 16 spacewalks. 07:00 p.m., 04/16/02, Update: NASA says new truss fully operational With the completion of the fourth and final spacewalk of Atlantis' mission, NASA managers today declared the new $790 million S0 truss mounted atop the international space station fully operational. While attention today was focused on spacewalkers Jerry Ross and Lee Morin, engineers at the Johnson Space Center successfully activated a final set of critical internal systems that eventually will route power to the station from huge solar arrays mounted on the ends of the completed truss. "We fully activated and checked out all of our electrical distribution equipment," said Ben Sellari, NASA's S0 launch package manager. "We also verified a very important new feature that S0 adds to the power distribution system, which is what we call a hot crosstie. We are able to take other primary and secondary channels and cross over between those in the event we have certain power losses. So it gives us some additional flexibility and redundancy in the future to do power management and respond to failures." Summarizing the testing to date, Sellari said "all of the S0 systems have been working essentially flawlessly. I mean, we haven't seen - and I'm almost afraid to say this because we might jinx ourselves - we haven't seen a single heater problem, we haven't seen a single unexpected or anomalous annunciation. The hardware and the software has been working very, very well." Lead spacewalk planner Dina Barclay was equally pleased, calling today's spacewalk the final chapter in "an extraordinary series of spacewalks that brought our newest element of the international space station to life." "Jerry and Lee, our grandfather duo, came inside having rounded out an incredible set of spacewalks," she said. "Today the crew far exceeded our expectations and we were even able to complete an objective that had been previously deleted and another one that was learned of post launch." The only problems involved a gas analyzer that appeared to stop working shortly after its installation and problems removing a stuck bolt from a cable cutter. But these were minor issues in a day that saw the astronauts tighten or loosen another 59 bolts and nine cable connections. "With these four spacewalks behind us, for our team it's mission accomplished," Barclay said. "We're really proud of what our crew and team have accomplished." Going into mission STS-110, the astronauts and flight controllers faced three tiers of mission requirements: 10 category 1 "mandatory" requirements, eight category 2 requirements for continuing station assembly and 31 tasks in category 3 that were required to assist future assembly crews. Sellari said that as of today, only three items have yet to be accomplished: The transfer or more fresh water, nitrogen and oxygen to the station. By the time Atlantis undocks Wednesday, however, the crew should be 100 percent complete. "This has been an extraordinary mission in a lot of ways," Sellari said. "We seem to make the missions (look) very easy. But I can assure you, nobody who has followed this flight very closely believes this has been an easy mission. The proficiency by which the element teams, our contractor teams, our operations teams and our flight crew teams perform their operations are both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing in that we try to accomplish a high percentage of our objectives, it's a curse because getting that high efficiency and having a lot of success makes it look very easy. And I can assure you this was not an easy flight. "We've had an extraordinarily successful mission," he summarized, "we are very, very proud of the hardware on board station. S0 is where it belongs, it's in space, it's an integral part of international space station, it is poised with its new capabilities to allow the space station now to expand its capabilities, its core systems, to meet its full potential as a world-class on-orbit laboratory." Aboard the space station, meanwhile, the astronauts took a break early this evening for a final joint dinner before Atlantis undocks Wednesday. Undocking is targeted for 2:31 p.m. A detailed preview will be posted here later this evening. =================================================================== Atlantis undocks from space station (04/17/02) 07:45 a.m., 04/17/02, Update: Astronauts gear up for undocking The Atlantis astronauts and their three space station counterparts are completing a final few tasks this morning before closing hatches between the two spacecraft in preparation for undocking. A farewell ceremony, followed by hatch closure, is targeted for 11:29 a.m. with undocking at 2:31 p.m. Working from the shuttle's flight deck, astronaut Jerry Ross will send the commands that actually cause the shuttle-station docking mechanism to disengage, allowing powerful springs to gently push Atlantis away. A few moments later, Atlantis pilot Stephen Frick will re-engage the shuttle's steering jets and begin backing straight away to a point about 400 feet directly in front of the station. Frick then plans to initiate a one-and-a-quarter lap fly around, guiding Atlantis to a point directly overhead before looping around behind the station and below it before returning to the starting point. The shuttle will continue from there back to the point directly overhead, where Frick will fire steering jets to leave the area for good. The separation maneuver is targeted for around 4:15 p.m. Here is a detailed timeline of today's activity, including highlights from the undocking timeline (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/17/02 Wed 04:14 AM...08...11...30...STS crew wakeup Wed 05:14 AM...08...12...30...ISS crew wakeup Wed 07:14 AM...08...14...30...ISS: Daily planning conference Wed 07:19 AM...08...14...35...Rendezvous tools checkout Wed 07:19 AM...08...14...35...Reboost operations Wed 07:19 AM...08...14...35...Final transfer operations Wed 07:29 AM...08...14...45...Oxygen transfer termination Wed 07:59 AM...08...15...15...ISS: Bursch exercises Wed 07:59 AM...08...15...15...Spacesuit reconfiguration Wed 08:14 AM...08...15...30...Frick exercises Wed 08:49 AM...08...16...05...Morin exercises Wed 08:59 AM...08...16...15...ISS: Onufrienko exercises Wed 09:19 AM...08...16...35...Ochoa exercises Wed 09:29 AM...08...16...45...ISS: Walz exercises Wed 10:29 AM...08...17...45...Final joint crew meal Wed 11:29 AM...08...18...45...Farewell ceremony Wed 11:49 AM...08...19...05...Hatches closed Wed 12:14 PM...08...19...30...Walheim exercises Wed 12:14 PM...08...19...30...Orbiter docking system leak check Wed 12:44 PM...08...20...00...Bloomfield exercises Wed 01:14 PM...08...20...30...Group B computer powerup Wed 01:14 PM...08...20...30...Spacesuit installation Wed 01:44 PM...08...21...00...Sunrise Wed 01:44 PM...08...21...00...Undocking timeline begins Wed 01:54 PM...08...21...10...ISS: PMA-2 configured for undocking Wed 02:31 PM...08...21...47...UNDOCKING Wed 02:33 PM...08...21...49...ISS holds current attitude Wed 02:35 PM...08...21...51...Range: 50 feet Wed 02:36 PM...08...21...52...Range: 75 feet Wed 02:41 PM...08...21...57...Sunset Wed 02:42 PM...08...21...58...Range: 150 feet Wed 03:15 PM...08...22...31...Begin stationkeeping at flyaround range Wed 03:16 PM...08...22...32...Begin flyaround Wed 03:17 PM...08...22...33...Sunrise Wed 03:29 PM...08...22...45...Shuttle directly above station Wed 03:40 PM...08...22...56...Shuttle directly behind station Wed 03:52 PM...08...23...08...Shuttle directly below station Wed 03:54 PM...08...23...10...Onufrienko exercises Wed 03:59 PM...08...23...15...Ross exercises Wed 04:03 PM...08...23...19...Shuttle directly in front of station Wed 04:13 PM...08...23...29...Sunset Wed 04:15 PM...08...23...31...Shuttle directly above station Wed 04:15 PM...08...23...31...FINAL SEPARATION Wed 04:44 PM...09...00...00...Centerline camera removal Wed 04:59 PM...09...00...15...Smith exercises Wed 04:59 PM...09...00...15...Group B powerdown Wed 07:29 PM...09...02...45...ISS crew sleep begins Wed 07:44 PM...09...03...00...STS crew sleep begins Revision I of the NASA television schedule is posted below. 12:05 p.m., 04/17/02, Update: Crews say farewell; hatches closed for undocking A final hatch between the shuttle Atlantis and the international space station was closed today at 12:04 p.m., setting the stage for undocking at 2:31 p.m. In a brief farewell ceremony just after 11 a.m., the two crews traded goodbyes and mounted a shuttle mission patch on a wall in the Destiny laboratory module before a final round of hugs and handshakes. "We just wanted to say 'thanks' to the entire NASA team," shuttle skipper Michael Bloomfield told flight controllers. "The last week up here at the international space station Alpha has just been an incredible experience for everybody. Some important things have taken place over the last week as we've been able to join with the international space station, we've been able to attach S0 (truss), do four spacewalks, we've been able to actually make the MT (mobile transporter) go back and forth along S0 and it took a complete team effort to make that work. ... We're just ecstatic that it went so well. "Alpha is just an incredible place to be," Bloomfield said as his six crewmates mingled a final few minutes with station commander Yury Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz. "We've had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with our good friends Yury, Dan and Carl over the last week and they're in good shape and they have a good ship up here that's in good running order and they welcomed us with open arms, they've taken us into their home and made us part of their family over the last week and we can't say enough about them. "We enjoyed every minute with them and it's going to be hard to leave them here. But we know they're going to continue great work, they've got a busy schedule coming up over the next couple of months and we're eagerly awaiting their return home. The astronauts then mounted the shuttle mission STS-110 patch on the wall of the lab and spent a final few moments together before closing the final hatches between the shuttle's docking module and the pressurized mating adapter on the forward end of the Destiny lab module. Undocking is scheduled for 2:31 p.m. and if all goes well, Atlantis will glide to a landing at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday at 12:26 p.m. The station astronauts, meanwhile, face a hectic schedule over the next few days and weeks. Early Saturday morning, they plan to strap into their Soyuz lifeboat and undock around 5:10 a.m., moving the spacecraft from its current docking port on the Russian Zarya module to a port on the Pirs airlock compartment attached to the Zvezda command module. That will clear the way for the arrival of a fresh Soyuz lifeboat that's scheduled for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome around 2:26 a.m. EDT on April 25. Docking at the station's Zarya port is expected around 4 a.m. on April 27. The so-called "taxi crew" delivering the new Soyuz is made up of commander Yuri Gidzenko, Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori and South African space tourist Mark Shuttleworth. The taxi crew will spend a week aboard the station before undocking around 7:05 p.m. on May 4 and returning to Earth aboard the lab's older Soyuz. The next station-bound space shuttle - Endeavour - is scheduled for launch May 30 to ferry the lab's next full-time crew to the outpost: Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, flight engineer Sergei Treschev and NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. Onufrienko, Bursch and Walz will return to Earth aboard Endeavour to wrap up a six-month stay in space. 02:35 p.m., 04/17/02, Update: Atlantis undocks from space station With pilot Stephen Frick at the controls, the shuttle Atlantis undocked from the international space station today at 2:31 p.m. as the two spacecraft raced across the North Atlantic Ocean at five miles per second. "Atlantis, departing," Navy Capt. Daniel Bursch said from inside the lab complex as the shuttle pulled away, ringing a ship's bell in what has become a tradition aboard the outpost. Frick plans to fly Atlantis through a slow, lap-and-a-quarter loop around of the station before leaving the area for good around 4:15 p.m., ending a week of joint work to attach a huge truss section to the top of the international space station. 3:15 p.m., 04/17/02, Update: Updated spacewalk and transfer statistics for STS-110 For readers interested in raw detail, launch package manager Ben Sellari provides the following summary of what the Atlantis astronauts accomplished during their mission to attach the S0 solar array truss section to the international space station: Installed the S0 element adding 26,716 pounds to the ISS Transferred 146 pounds of oxygen (130 pounds required) Transferred 45 pounds of nitrogen (40 pounds required) Transferred 1,463 pounds of water to ISS. Estimated 2,228.04 pounds of hardware and supplies delivered to ISS Transferred 22.9 pounds of spacewalk hardware to ISS Estimated 2,450.34 pounds of logistics transferred to shuttle Disposed of about 229 pounds of condensate from ISS Boosted station altitude by about five nautical miles Conducted four spacewalks totaling 28 hours and 22 minutes (single-flight record for ISS assembly); Here is a list of spacewalk actions during this mission: Total bolt actuations: 289 TA clamps employed: 92 Connectors mated or demated: 159 Connector caps removed or installed: 49 PIP pins, actuators or latches cycled: 55 Circuit interrupt device on-off cycles: 12 05:15 p.m., 04/17/02, Update: Atlantis crew departs for good Pilot Stephen Frick fired the shuttle Atlantis' maneuvering jets around 4:15 p.m., ending a fly around of the international space station and leaving the outpost on its own for the first time since docking last Wednesday. "Atlantis, Alpha, Godspeed and happy landings," station engineer Carl Walz radioed from the lab complex as Atlantis began its final departure. "Hey Carl, Dan, Yury, thanks so much. We've enjoyed the last week with you guys, you've been outstanding hosts," shuttle skipper Michael Bloomfield replied. "We've just been admiring the incredible view you have up here and the machine you live in, Alpha, is really beautiful. So thanks so much for taking care of us the last week, we'll keep you in our thoughts and prayers and we'll see you on the ground in a couple of months. We'll have you over and have a real barbecue party." "All right, sounds great, we'll bring our kerchiefs." Atlantis is scheduled to glide back to Earth Friday, landing on runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center at 12:26:21 p.m. Following a Soyuz taxi flight later this month (see the 12:05 p.m. status report below for details), the shuttle Endeavour will blast off May 30 on a mission to carry the station's next full-time crew into orbit and to bring Walz and his crewmates - commander Yury Onufrienko and Daniel Bursch - back to Earth. Launch had been targeted for May 31, but it has been moved up one day to provide a bit of cushion between the shuttle and another rocket scheduled for launch a few days later. Endeavour also will carry a new wrist-roll joint up for the station's robot arm that will be installed during the mission's third and final spacewalk. The new joint is being installed because of an avionics problem in one of the redundant sets of avionics currently in control of the space crane. Atlantis' crew attached the S0 truss, the first section in a nine-piece beam that eventually will stretch the length of a football field and carry the station's main solar arrays and radiators. A flight scheduled for launch Aug. 22 will carry up the next truss segment, which will attach to the starboard side of S0 and a flight scheduled for launch Oct. 6 will carry up an identical port-side section. Radiator and solar array sections will be added next year. "For the record at this point, we have now flown 26 missions in support of ISS since the FGB launch in November 1998 and in the last 21 months we've flown 22 flights successfully and that is unprecedented in human spaceflight (history)," said Mike Suffredini, manager of space station integration at the Johnson Space Center. "So we're setting records as we go. "There's 165 tons on orbit at this time with well over a million lines of (computer software) code, we've conducted 37 EVAs with a total of about 230 hours and yes, we are also doing research in the middle of all this. We've conducted, or are in the process of conducting, 54 investigations with over 70,000 hours of research time. So we're well on our way, we're doing research while we're assembling space station and we believe we're set for the upcoming elements to fly." By the end of this year," he said, "we'll have over 200 tons on orbit and be we'll on our way with research and be in a posture then for the addition of the rest of the power modules which begin coming up in 2003." =================================================================== Astronauts test re-entry systems (04/18/02) 07:45 a.m., 04/18/02, Update: Astronauts test re-entry systems; gear up for Friday landing The Atlantis astronauts are gearing up for a 12:26 p.m. Friday landing, testing the shuttle's re-entry systems, getting in a final round of exercise and packing up no-longer-needed equipment. Commander Michael Bloomfield, pilot Stephen Frick and flight engineer Ellen Ochoa will spend about an hour this morning working through a routine flight control system checkout, firing up one of the ship's hydraulic units and testing cockpit displays and instrumentation to make sure critical systems are ready for entry. They also will fire the shuttle's myriad steering jets in a standard pre-landing test to confirm the health of thrusters needed during the initial stages of atmospheric entry. Once that work is out of the way, Bloomfield and Frick will take turns "flying" a sophisticated laptop computer shuttle simulator that allows them to practice the final phases of landing. The entire crew will participate in a final set of media interviews beginning at 10:14 a.m. Aside from packing up, the only other major items on today's flight plan are a rocket firing this afternoon as part of an experiment to determine how rocket exhaust affects the extreme upper atmosphere and another "burn" later to adjust the shuttle's orbit. The astronauts plan to go to bed around 7:14 p.m. Here's the flight plan for today as uplinked to the crew from mission control (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/18/02 Thu 03:44 AM...09...11...00...STS crew wakeup Thu 06:44 AM...09...14...00...Pilot Stephen Frick exercises Thu 06:49 AM...09...14...05...GPS OPS 3 test Thu 07:14 AM...09...14...30...Rex Wallheim exercises Thu 07:44 AM...09...15...00...Jerry Ross exercises Thu 07:49 AM...09...15...05...Flight control system checkout Thu 08:14 AM...09...15...30...Post EVA spacesuit entry prep Thu 08:14 AM...09...15...30...Steven Smith exercises Thu 08:59 AM...09...16...15...Reaction control system hot fire test Thu 09:14 AM...09...16...30...PILOT landing practice Thu 10:14 AM...09...17...30...Crew media interviews Thu 10:34 AM...09...17...50...Crew meal Thu 11:34 AM...09...18...50...L-1 communications check Thu 11:54 AM...09...19...10...Deorbit review Thu 12:24 PM...09...19...40...Cabin stow begins Thu 12:59 PM...09...20...15...SIMPLEX opportunity Thu 01:24 PM...09...20...40...Lee Morin exercises Thu 01:39 PM...09...20...55...Orbit adjust burn Thu 02:09 PM...09...21...25...Ellen Ochoa exercises Thu 02:39 PM...09...21...55...Michael Bloomfield exercises Thu 03:44 PM...09...23...00...Ergometer stow Thu 04:04 PM...09...23...20...KU-band antenna stow Thu 07:14 PM...10...02...30...Crew sleep begins The astronauts will be awakened at 3:14 a.m. Friday to begin preparations for landing. The shuttle has two opportunities to land in Florida Friday on successive orbits. With good weather expected, Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert will not be called up. For the first landing opportunity at 12:26:21 p.m., Bloomfield and Frick will fire Atlantis' braking rockets at 11:20:27 a.m. for two minutes and 14 seconds, slowing the ship by 172 mph to begin the shuttle's long glide back to Earth. Here is a preliminary timeline of entry day events for both opportunities: TIME..........EVENT ORBIT 170 07:20 AM......Begin deorbit timeline 07:35 AM......Payload bay door radiator stow if necessary 07:45 AM......Mission specialists seat installation 07:51 AM......Computers set for deorbit prep 07:55 AM......Hydraulic systems configured for startup 08:20 AM......Flash evaporator cooling system checkout 08:26 AM......Final payload deactivation 08:40 AM......Payload bay doors closed 08:50 AM......Mission control 'go' for OPS-3 entry software load 09:00 AM......Flight computers load OPS-3 software 09:25 AM......Entry switchlist verification 09:35 AM......Deorbit rocket firing parameters loaded 09:40 AM......Crew entry review 09:55 AM......Bloomfield, Frick don pressure suits 10:12 AM......IMU navigation system alignment 10:20 AM......Bloomfield, Frick strap in; others don suits 10:37 AM......Shuttle steering check 10:40 AM......Hydraulic power unit prestart 10:47 AM......Toilet deactivation 10:55 AM......Paylaod bay vent doors closed for entry 11:00 AM......Mission control 'go' for deorbit burn 11:06 AM......Mission specialists strap in 11:15 AM......Single hydraulic unit start 11:20:27 AM...Deorbit ignition on orbit 170 (dV: 253 fps; dT: 2:14) 11:22:41 AM...Deorbit burn complete 11:55:01 AM...The shuttle hits the discernible atmosphere 12:19:47 PM...Velocity less than mach 2.5 12:22:00 PM...Velocity less than mach 1 12:22:52 PM...Shuttle banks to line up on runway 15 12:26:21 PM...Landing on orbit 171 ORBIT 171 12:38 PM......Mission control 'go' for deorbit burn 12:44 PM......Mission specialists strap in 12:53 PM......Single hydraulic unit start 12:58:50 PM...Deorbit ignition on orbit 171 (dV: 257 fps; dT: 2:16) 01:01:47 PM...Deorbit ignition complete 01:31:14 PM...he shuttle hits the discernible atmosphere 01:56:04 PM...Velocity less than mach 2.5 01:58:19 PM...Velocity less than mach 1 01:58:41 PM...Shuttle banks to line up on runway 15 02:02:38 PM...Landing on orbit 172 These numbers will be updated as required following a mission status briefing at 2:30 p.m. with entry flight director Leroy Cain. 03:30 p.m., 04/18/02, Update: Weather 'go' for Friday landing Entry flight director Leroy Cain says the shuttle Atlantis is in good shape for landing Friday and with forecasters predicting ideal weather, the astronauts appear to be on track for an on-time Kennedy Space Center touchdown at 12:26:21 p.m. "We did our flight control system checkout, we did the reaction control system hotfire with all the thrusters, we did some tests with the GPS, all of that was completely nominal, we had no problems," Cain said of this morning's day-before-entry tests and checkout procedures. Forecasters are predicting scattered clouds at 4,000 feet and 20,000 feet and winds out of the east (100- degrees) at six knots, gusting to 10 knots. That translates into a crosswind of about eight knots on the shuttle runway and headwinds/tailwinds of just six knots, all well within NASA's safety limits. "That's a really good looking 'go' forecast," Cain said. "We have a pretty good forecast for KSC on Saturday and it's a little too early to tell for Sunday. We basically have a real good vehicle on orbit, it's been a very clean vehicle the entire mission ... and currently the weather forecast looks good for tomorrow." The shuttle's backup landing site at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., will not be staffed Friday. But if Atlantis fails to make it back to Earth for some reason, Edwards likely would be staffed Saturday for subsequent landing attempts. Atlantis has enough rocket fuel and on-board supplies to remain in orbit until Monday in a worst-case scenario. Two landing opportunities in Florida and two in California are available each day. But given the current forecast for Florida, an Edwards landing appears very unlikely. =================================================================== Shuttle Atlantis returns to Earth (04/19/02) 07:55 a.m., 04/19/02, Update: Astronauts prepare Atlantis for landing With ideal weather expected, the Atlantis astronauts are working through their deorbit timeline, readying the shuttle for an 11:19 a.m. rocket firing to begin the hourlong descent to Earth. Touchdown on runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center is now targeted for 12:26:59 a.m. to close out an 11-day mission spanning 4.4 million miles and 170 complete orbits since blastoff April 8. The astronauts were awakened at 3:44 a.m. by a recording of Sting's "Message in a Bottle" beamed up from mission control. "Good morning Atlantis, and happy entry day," radioed astronaut Shannon Lucid from Houston. "We certainly hope the message you get today is come on home, Atlantis, we're ready for you." The Spaceflight Meteorology Group at the Johnson Space Center in Houston predicts good weather at the Kennedy Space Center today, with scattered clouds at 3,000 feet and 25,000 feet and winds out of 110 degrees at eight knots with gusts to 11 knots. That translates into a crosswind component of about 7 knots, well within NASA's safety limits. Commander Michael Bloomfield and his crewmates - pilot Stephen Frick, flight engineer Ellen Ochoa, Steven Smith, Rex Walheim, Jerry Ross and Lee Morin - plan to close the shuttle's cargo bay doors at 8:40 a.m. An hour later, the astronauts will take a moment to review their entry procedures before donning their bright orange pressure suits and strapping in for the plunge back to Earth. Flying upside down and backward over the Indian Ocean, Bloomfield and Frick plan to fire Atlantis' twin orbital maneuvering system braking rockets at 11:18:59 a.m. The two-minute 14-second burn will slow the orbiter by 253 feet per second, or 172 mph, lowering the far side of the orbit to a point deep in the atmosphere near the Kennedy Space Center. Thirty-five minutes later, Atlantis will hit the discernible atmosphere at an altitude of 400,000 feet, or about 76 miles. From there, the shuttle will be 4,900 miles from touchdown, a distance Atlantis will cover in just 31 minutes. Atlantis has two landing opportunities today in Florida on successive orbits. Given the forecast, NASA is not staffing Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. Here is the latest timeline of today's deorbit activities (updated at 7:20 a.m. by mission control): TIME..........EVENT ORBIT 170 07:18 AM......Deorbit timeline begins 07:33 AM......Payload bay door radiator stow 07:43 AM......Mission specialists seat installation 07:49 AM......Computers set for deorbit prep 07:53 AM......Hydraulic system configuration 08:18 AM......Flash evaporator cooling system checkout 08:24 AM......Final payload deactivation 08:38 AM......Payload bay doors closed 08:48 AM......Mission control 'go' for entry software load 08:58 AM......OPS-3 entry software loaded 09:23 AM......Entry switchlist verification 09:33 AM......Deorbit burn parameters updated 09:38 AM......Crew entry review 09:53 AM......Commander, pilot don entry suits 10:10 AM......Inertial measurement unit alignment 10:18 AM......Commander, pilot strap in; mission specialists don suits 10:35 AM......Shuttle steering check 10:38 AM......Hydraulic power system prestart 10:45 AM......Toilet deactivation 10:53 AM......Payload bay vent doors closed for entry 10:58 AM......Mission control 'go' for deorbit burn 11:04 AM......Mission specialists strap in 11:13 AM......Single hydraulic power unit start 11:18:08 AM...TDRS-West acquisition of signal 11:18:59 AM...Deorbit ignition (dV: 257 fps; dT: 2:16) 11:21:13 AM...Deorbit burn complete 11:55:01 AM...Entry interface (range: 4,946 statute miles) 12:19:47 PM...Velocity less than mach 2.5 12:22:00 PM...Velocity less than mach 1 12:22:52 PM...Start 247-degree turn to line up on runway 15 12:26:59 PM...Landing ORBIT 171 12:38 PM......Mission control 'go' for deorbit burn 12:44 PM......Mission specialists strap in 12:53 PM......Single APU start 12:58:39 PM...AOS TDRS 12:58:50 PM...Deorbit ignition 01:01:06 PM...Deorbit ignition complete 01:31:14 PM...Entry interface (range: 4,828 statute miles) 01:56:04 PM...Velocity less than mach 2.5 01:58:19 PM...Velocity less than mach 1 01:58:41 PM...Start 301 degree turn to line up on runway 15 02:02:38 PM...Landing This will be the 89th daytime landing in shuttle history and the 45th daytime landing at the Kennedy Space Center. See the CBS News quick-look data sheets (Data Sheet 1 and Data Sheet 2) for mission facts and figures at a glance. See our Entry Timeline for a graphic of today's deorbit flight plan. 11:25 a.m., 04/19/02, Update: Shuttle descent begins Commander Michael Bloomfield and pilot Stephen Frick fired the shuttle Atlantis' twin orbital maneuvering system braking rockets at 11:19 a.m., slowing the ship by about 172 mph to begin the hourlong glide back to Earth. With scattered clouds and light winds expected at the Kennedy Space Center, touchdown on NASA's 3-mile-long shuttle runway is expected around 12:26:59 p.m. 12:40 p.m., 04/19/02, Update: Atlantis returns to Earth Commander Michael Bloomfield, making his first landing at the controls of a space shuttle, guided Atlantis to a smooth touchdown on runway 33 at the Kennedy Space Center today to close out a near-flawless space station assembly mission. Enjoying a spectacular view as the shuttle plunged across sunny central Florida, Bloomfield and his crewmates announced their arrival with a double sonic boom that rattled windows for miles around. After giving rookie pilot Stephen Frick a few minutes of "stick time" flying Atlantis through a sweeping right overhead turn, Bloomfield took over and guided the ship to a tire-smoking touchdown on runway 33 at 12:26:57 p.m. to close out an 11-day flight. "Houston, Atlantis, wheels stopped," Bloomfield radioed mission control as the shuttle rolled to a halt. "Bloomer, we copy wheels stopped," replied astronaut Charles Hobaugh at the Johnson Space Center. "That was a great landing and a great way to end a mission that has been superb in all respects. You've attached the beginning of the backbone of the station in addition to setting a record for EVA in ISS assembly." "OK, copy, Scorch, and thanks to the entire team. We feel very privileged to have been a small part of that team." Mission duration for the 109th shuttle flight, which included a space station record 28 hours and 22 minutes of spacewalk assembly time, was 10 days 19 hours 42 minutes and 38 seconds. Bloomfield, Frick, flight engineer Ellen Ochoa and spacewalkers Steven Smith, Rex Walheim, Jerry Ross and Lee Morin plan to spend the night at the Kennedy Space Center before flying home to Houston early Saturday. The astronauts accomplished the primary goal of their mission April 11 when the $600 million S0 truss (pronounced S-zero) and its $190 million mobile transporter were attached to the top of the international space station's Destiny laboratory module. The 27,000-pound truss segment is the central element in a nine-segment truss that eventually stretch longer than a football field and carry the station's main solar power arrays and ammonia coolant radiators. S0 provides the structural attachment for the entire beam and routes power cables and ammonia coolant lines into and out of the space station complex. It is equipped with four computers, GPS receivers and laser ring gyros to provide station location and orientation information as well as electronic converters and other power conditioning equipment. The mobile transporter, attached to rails running along the forward face of S0, eventually will carry the station's Canadarm2 space crane back and forth to various work sites to install outboard truss elements, radiators and solar arrays. The arm currently is mounted on the Destiny module and Ochoa, assisted by station engineer Daniel Bursch, used it April 11 to mount S0 atop the lab. Smith and Walheim then carried out a spacewalk to complete the first set of structural attachments and to make critical electrical connections. Morin and Ross, making his world record seventh flight, then completed the connections during a second spacewalk two days later. During a third excursion the next day, this one by Smith and Walheim, the station's arm was re-wired to receive power from the truss. That was a critical step that had to be completed before the arm can be mounted on the mobile transporter for continued assembly. During a final spacewalk Tuesday, Ross and Morin completed a variety of lower-priority tasks before the shuttle undocked Wednesday, leaving Bursch, Expedition 4 commander Yury Onufrienko and Carl Walz behind. Ross now ranks second on the world spacewalk records list with 58 hours and 18 minutes of EVA time in a U.S.-record nine spacewalks. Onufrienko and his crewmates, meanwhile, spent the day today readying the station for their brief departure early Saturday to move the lab's Soyuz lifeboat from a docking port on the Zarya propulsion module to the Pirs docking compartment attached to the Zvezda command module. The crew is scheduled to undock at 5:02 a.m. EDT and to redock at 5:35 a.m. That will clear the Zarya port for arrival of a fresh Soyuz April 27. The Russian spacecraft are rated for six months in orbit and the capsule currently attached is nearing the end of its orbital lifetime. The new Soyuz will be delivered by commander Yuri Gidzenko, Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori and South African space tourist Mark Shuttleworth, who paid the Russians more than $10 million - the exact amount is not clear - to become the second tourist to visit the space station. NASA's next station flight is scheduled for liftoff May 30 when the shuttle Endeavour will carry the lab's next full-time crew into space: Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, flight engineer Sergei Treschev and NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. Onufrienko, Bursch and Walz will return to Earth aboard Endeavour to wrap up a six-month stay in space. 02:30 p.m., 04/19/02, Update: Astronauts inspect shuttle Atlantis Looking fit and in good spirits, commander Michael Bloomfield and four of his six crewmates took a few moments to stroll around the shuttle Atlantis today for a brief post-landing inspection before heading to crew quarters and reunions with friends and family members. "It's great to be back here at KSC and on planet Earth," Bloomfield said. "We just got done with an incredible mission up to the international space station. ... We began the construction of the phase three of the international space station, we put a railroad in place and it's just the beginning of this huge truss that's going to be up there. "It's great to be back home. Please don't forget the folks who are still up there on the international space station, up on Alpha, keep them in your thoughts and prayers." The astronauts were greeted by NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and other senior space agency managers. Flight engineer Ellen Ochoa and Lee Morin did not participate in the shuttle walk around. For astronaut Jerry Ross, landing marked the end of a world record seventh spaceflight. A grandfather, Ross also ranks second on the spacewalk records list with 58 hours and 18 minutes of spacewalk time during nine EVAs. Based on his remarks today on the runway, it would appear doubtful he will ever make an eighth flight. "It's great to be back in the United States of America, a place that can do tremendous things like this and can share those with the rest of the world through international partnerships," Ross said. "I'd just like to thank NASA, thank the country, for the tremendous opportunities I've had to serve with them. I look forward to continuing to do that service in some form in the future. Thank you and it's good to be home." The astronauts plan to spend the night in Florida and to fly back to the Johnson Space Center near Houston early Saturday. Earlier Saturday, the crew of the international space station - Expedition 4 commander Yury Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz - plan to abandon ship briefly to move their Soyuz lifeboat to a different docking port. NASA television coverage will begin at 4 a.m. Undocking is now targeted for 5:16 a.m. with redocking on tap at 5:34 a.m. ===================================================================