The joined crews of shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station aim to set up house today as the 10 astronauts and cosmonauts start to outfit the outpost for larger resident crews.With the spacecraft circling 213.5 miles above the planet, the shuttle and station crews are preparing for a busy day that will include the installation of new crew quarters as well as a water treatment system.
"We're ready to continue making extreme home improvements," Endeavour pilot Eric Boe told colleagues at the Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The new sleep stations will be set up in the U.S. Harmony module, which was delivered to the outpost in October 2007 and now serves as a pressurized passageway to the European Columbus laboratory and the Japanese Kibo science research facility.
The Water Recovery System will be installed in the U.S. Destiny laboratory. It is a complex treatment system that will turn urine and perspiration into potable drinking water -- a critical capability in advance of plans to expand the size of resident station crews to six next spring.
You can watch the action unfold live here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the NASA TV box on the righthand side of this page to launch our NASA TV viewer and round-the-clock NASA TV coverage of the STS-126 mission.
The timing of major milestones on this sixth day of Endeavour's flight can be seen in the latest revision -- Rev E -- of the STS-126 NASA TV Schedule: NASA TV Schedule.
The crew's detailed timeline and messages from Mission Control can be found here: Flight Day 6 Execute Package.
A big-picture look at the whole 15-day mission can been seen here in this Official STS-126 Press Kit.
Or a quick-look summary is here: STS-126 Fact Sheet.
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