Mission Discovery: Shuttle Astronauts Arrive at ISS (SPACE.com)

12.12.2006 08:26 Space - Source: Yahoo space

HOUSTON-Seven

astronauts arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) late Monday as NASA's shuttle Discovery docked with the orbital laboratory for a crew swap and an intense week of spacecraft construction.

Contact occurred at 5:12 p.m. EST (2212 GMT) as shuttle commander Mark Polansky eased Discovery into a berth at the end of the station's U.S. Destiny laboratory just after orbital sunrise and while both spacecraft hovered some 220 miles above southeast Asia. The successful docking ended a two-day chase that began with the shuttle's successful night launch Saturday.

"Capture confirmed," said Discovery pilot Bill Oefelein.

"Welcome aboard," said station commander Michael Lopez-Alegria.

Shortly prior to docking, Polansky guided Discovery through a 360-degree backflip so ISS crewmembers could photograph heat shields on the shuttle's underside to look for any damage that might have been incurred during launch [image]. In-orbit inspections have been standard since the 2003 Columbia tragedy that killed seven astronauts.

Preliminary data from shuttle and ground cameras and radar in place during Discovery's launch have revealed nothing of concern, and the spacecraft looks to be in good condition, NASA officials said yesterday.

"The long range cameras showed typical performance. You could see a few very small pieces of foam or ice come off-none impacted the orbiter," NASA deputy space shuttle manager John Shannon said of Discovery's launch. "The pad cameras showed very good performance, it was the best external tank condition we have seen to date since return to flight."

Flying onboard Discovery with Polansky are shuttle pilot William Oefelein and mission specialists Robert Curbeam, Nicholas Patrick, Joan Higginbotham, Sunita Williams and Christer Fuglesang, a representative of the European Space Agency (ESA) and Sweden's first astronaut.

Beginning tomorrow, the STS-116 crew will stage three spacewalks to install a new $11 million Port 5 (P5) spacer segment to the ISS and rewire the orbital laboratory's electrical grid so it can switch to a permanent power configuration [image].

Crew swap

Williams will officially relieve German astronaut Thomas Reiter tonight as Expedition 14's flight engineer by transferring her Soyuz spacecraft seat liner to the ISS, which will become her new home for the next six months.

Her crewmates will be Lopez Alegria and Expedition 14 flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin. Reiter, who has been on board the ISS since July, will return to Earth with Discovery's crew on Dec. 21.

Shortly after the seat liner transfer, Patrick will use Discovery's 50-foot (15-meter) long robotic arm to latch onto the P5 truss segment in the shuttle's payload cargo bay and hand it off to the station's robot arm, operated by Williams.

This "robotic handshake" is set to take place at 9:02 p.m. EST (0302 Dec. 12 GMT). The two-ton P5 segment will remain poised at the end of the station arm until tomorrow, when Curbeam and Fuglesang will install it during the first of three planned spacewalks for the mission.

To prepare for their extravehicular activity (EVA), the two spacewalkers will spend the night in the station's Quest airlock, which will be shut early tomorrow morning at 12:37 a.m. EST (0537 GMT).

Nicknamed the EVA 'campout,' the move allows spacewalkers to purge nitrogen from their bodies while they sleep at a slightly lower atmospheric pressure - 10.2 psi - rather than the standard 14.7 psi aboard Discovery or the ISS.