Live in orbit: Crew clears way for Harmony

Astronauts aboard Discovery and the International Space Station are cruising through a two-step crane operation today, setting the stage for the delivery Friday of a pressurized passageway to still-to-be-launched European and Japanese labs.

Now cradled in Discovery's 60-foot-long cargo bay, the U.S. Harmony module is prime payload for NASA's 120th shuttle mission. The Italian-built module is scheduled to be moored outside the U.S. side of the station during the first of five spacewalks planned for Discovery's 10-day stay at the outpost.

But first, the astronauts have to clear the way. A sensor-laden inspection boom stowed on the sill of the shuttle's cargo bay is being moved so that Harmony can be hoisted out of Discovery and delivered to the station.

Floating on the flight deck of Discovery, shuttle skipper Pam Melroy and pilot George Zamka lifted the inspection boom from its mount with the shuttle's robot arm. The sensor-tipped extension then was handed off to the station's robot arm, which is being operated by shuttle mission specialists Clay Anderson and Stephanie Wilson.














Now Anderson and Wilson are in the process of handing the boom back to Melroy and Zamka, who aim to park it up over the top of Discovery so it won't interfere with the delivery of the Harmony module.

Preparations for the first spacewalk, meanwhile, already have picked up inside the station. Shuttle mission specialists Scott Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock, with an assist from station commander Peggy Whitson, moved spacesuits into the U.S. Quest airlock and are conducting systems checks.

Parazynski and Wheelock will be camping out in the airlock overnight. There, they'll breathe pure oxygen to purge nitrogen gas from their bodies, a move made to avoid the type of decompression sickness that SCUBA divers call "the bends."

Parazynski and Wheelock aim to head outside the joined shuttle-station complex around 6:28 a.m. EDT Friday. You can watch the excursion live here in The Flame Trench, where NASA TV is being webcast on a 24/7 basis during the mission. Simply click the link below the top image to launch our NASA TV viewer.