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Discovery's astronauts departed the International Space Station at 3:53 p.m. EDT as the shuttle and the station soared 216 miles over the Indian Ocean.
Shuttle pilot Tony Antonelli is backing the shuttle to a point 400 feet in front of the station and then will begin a looping flyaround of the outpost. The flyaround is scheduled to begin about 4:18 p.m.Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata rang a bell inside the U.S. Unity module as the shuttle slowly edged away from the station.
"Space shuttle Discovery departing," said Wakata, who flew up to the outpost on Discovery and is the first Japanese astronaut to serve a long-duration tour there.
"Discovery, Alpha. Godspeed," said station commander Mike Fincke. "Thanks for making us symmetrical, giving us full power and all the other wonderful things you did for us. Good work. come again."Discovery mission commander Lee Archambault replied: "Thanks for the really great work as well, Alpha. have a good one and we'll see you on the ground in about a month."
Antonelli will guide the shuttle on a loop and a quarter, and NASA now says the Ku-Band antenna that enables the shuttle to downlink live video will be in blockage for about an hour -- or nearly the entire flyaround.A final separation burn is scheduled at about 5:37 p.m.
However, video is being recorded and will be downlinked by the astronauts later today.
The Ku-band antenna is mounted near the forward bulkhead in the shuttle's payload bay and beams video back through a NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite circling 22,300 miles above Earth. The shuttle's orientation during the next hour will block the line of sight with the TDRS satellite, so no video can be beamed back live as a result.We'll continue to webcast live NASA TV nonetheless. Simply click the NASA TV box at the righthand side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer. And be sure to refresh this page for periodic updates.
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