Space shuttle Discovery's seven astronauts are ready to get to work during their first morning in orbit following Sunday's beautiful twilight launch from Kennedy Space Center. Houston's Mission Control Center awakened the crew with Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird," a song selected by Discovery pilot and first-time shuttle flyer Dominic "Tony" Antonelli, A U.S. Navy commander.
"Good morning Discovery, and especially to Tony," said astronaut Janice Voss, communicating with the crew from a console in Houston.
"And good morning, Houston. Thanks for that great song," Antonelli replied. "I know we've got a long day, so I guess we should get right to work."
"Indeed you do," said Voss.
The day's primary job is a an inspection of Discovery's reinforced carbon-carbon nose cap and wing edges for any damage from debris that could have struck the orbiter during its 7:43 p.m. EDT launch.
Around 1 p.m. today, the shuttle's robotic arm will grab from the right side of the payload bay a 50-foot boom extension equipped with laser sensors.
And starting around 2:30 p.m., a meticulous, roughly four-hour inspection of the heat shielding surfaces will begin. Those surfaces are critical to the shuttle's safe return through intense heat as it re-enters Earth's atmosphere.
That return is scheduled for March 28, the end of a planned 13-day mission that includes three spacewalks. By the end of this week, the crew hopes to have installed the final segment of the International Space Station's central truss, or backbone, and deployed a last set of power-generating solar arrays.
As the shuttle crew was waking up, the three space station residents were finishing up workouts on orbit more than 200 miles above Earth.
Both crews are preparing for the shuttle's scheduled docking with the station around 5:15 p.m. Tuesday.
You can check out the entire mission's schedule here.
And you can watch it all live here on The Flame Trench. Click the NASA TV still image on the right side of the page to launch a NASA TV viewer.
And refresh this page for updates throughout the day.
IMAGE NOTE: Click the images to enlarge them. Above, a computer graphic of Discovery on orbit as in NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston. Below, as it arcs into space, space shuttle Discovery is lighted by sunlight after leaving the darker skies over NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the STS-119 mission. Liftoff was on time at 7:43 p.m. EDT. The STS-119 mission is the 28th to the International Space Station and the 125th space shuttle flight. Discovery will deliver the final pair of power-generating solar array wings and the S6 truss segment. Installation of S6 will signal the station's readiness to house a six-member crew for conducting increased science. Photo credit: NASA/Jeff Wolfe
No comments:
Post a Comment