Endeavour’s STS-118 crew ready for Friday inspection and station docking

William Atkins
Friday, 10 August 2007 20:34

Science - Space

NASA’s Mission Control Center (MCC) has scheduled the docking of the shuttle with the space station at 12:53 pm EDT, Friday, August 10, 2007, along with an inspection of the underside of the shuttle as it approaches the docking port of the station.

On Thursday, the crew—commander Scott Kelly, pilot Charlie Hobaugh and mission specialists Tracy Caldwell, Rick Mastracchio, Dave Williams, Barbara Morgan and Alvin Drew—spent most of the day inspecting the shuttle for damage that might have been caused during liftoff and preparing for their assembly activities on the International Space Station (ISS).
 

The crew of the space shuttle Endeavour used the 50-foot boom on the end of the 50-foot robotic arm of the shuttle, which contains cameras and laser sensors, to inspect the nose cap and wings of the spacecraft, especially the leading edges of the wings. Data from these inspections are downlinked to the MCC so mission control personnel can analyze the information in greater detail.

During liftoff, tracking cameras positioned on the external tank (ET) showed nine pieces of foam debris falling off of the ET, any of which may have impacted the heat shield on the underbelly of the shuttle. The inspection will give special attention to three areas that pose the greatest possible threat of damage to the shuttle.

After an initial inspection the three pieces appear, according to NASA’s John Shannon, who is the head of the STS-118 mission management team, to be too small to have caused any problems.

One bit of foam debris appears to have hit the tip of the body flap (near the underside of the tail section) at around 24 seconds into the flight. A second bit of debris looks to have hit the underside of the shuttle’s right wing at about 58 seconds after liftoff. A third fragment came off the ET approximately three minutes into the flight, which is at a time when damage to the shuttle is unlikely because the shuttle is above the densest parts of the Earth’s atmosphere.

In order to make further inspections of the shuttle for possible damage, mission commander Kelly will perform a rendezvous pitch maneuver (a back flip in space) during approach to the space station, just before docking. During the maneuver ISS Expedition 15 crewmembers, Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, will photograph the underside of Endeavour.

Another problem reported onboard the Endeavour was to a controller on an oxygen tank that provides power to the fuel cells. Mission controllers report that the problem is minor in nature.

During the morning of Friday, the shuttle, at a lower altitude and behind the ISS by about 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) will close that distance difference by about 160 miles (258 kilometers) per 90-minute orbit. (A lower orbit means that the shuttle is traveling faster than the space station, which is in a higher orbit.) Two rendezvous maneuvers will be performed to prepare for the final docking with the station.

Several spacewalks to be performed by the shuttle and space station crews during the STS-118 mission are reported in the iTWire article “Endeavour’s STS-118 crew preparing for 3, possibly 4, spacewalks”.

All of the spacewalks can be viewed on NASA TV. The TV schedule of the spacewalks, and other STS-118 activities, is found at: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/mission_schedule.html.