NASA astronauts inspecting Atlantis for damage

William Atkins
Friday, 08 February 2008 21:04

Science - Space

The 50-foot boom on the end of the 50-foot RMS was added after the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed and its crew perished above Texas on February 1, 2003.

Foam insulation fell off its external tank at liftoff, and punctured a hole into the underside of the shuttle. Inspections of the shuttle was not performed at this time.

Today, the boom/RMS combination allows the shuttle crew to make a complete inspection of the shuttle after it reaches low-Earth orbit following its launch.

A suite of sensors are on the boom. The Canadarm grasps the boom and can position it in any of a number of positions in order to make a inspection of the shuttle’s tiles and other critical surfaces.

On flight day two, the astronauts are also checking out their spacesuits in preparation for three spacewalks during their mission, along with the checkout of various tools and equipment, which will be tranferred over to the space station, and used in the spacewalks.

Their primary job for this mission is to remove the $2 billion European Columbus scientific laboratory from out of the shuttle’s cargo hold, position it onto the space station, and to attach its many fuel and electrical lines that will provide life support for the module.

The Columbus module is one of a series of modules to be added to expand the space station to hold additional astronauts for its eventual completion in the year 2010. Once these scientific modules are ready for use, a wide variety of scientific experiments will be possible on the station, both to learn more about our Earth and the universe all around us.

Atlantis is expected to dock with the space station on Saturday, February 9, 2008, at 12:20 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST). Currently, it is catching up with the station at a rate of about 500 nautical miles per orbit.

Many of the activities scheduled for the STS-122 mission will be viewable live from NASA TV.

Additional information on the STS-122 mission and its crew is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts122/.