The Endeavour astronauts face some tricky crane operations at the International Space Station today and NASA will hear from its new administrator and his deputy for the first time since they were confirmed last week by the U.S. Senate.
The shuttle crew will get a half-day off and mission commander Mark Polansky will twitter from orbit and you-tube at the same time. Their spaceship was cleared for atmospheric reentry late Monday -- pending a final inspection for micrometeorite or orbital debris hits on shuttle heat shield components.
The Endeavour crew's work starts early with the unberthing of a small carrier from the shuttle's cargo bay around 8:08 a.m. The ship's 50-foot robot arm will be used to hoist the carrier -- which is outfitted with three science experiments -- around 9:43 a.m. and then hand it off to crane operators wielding the station's equally lengthy robotic arm.
Station arm operations will install the experiment carrier on the back porch of the Japanese Kibo science research lab . Then they'll pluck a different carrier from atop the station's Mobile Transporter rail cart around 11:53 a.m. and deposit it back in the shuttle's cargo bay.
The second carrier was used to haul up large spare parts -- a six-foot dish antenna, a hefty cooling system pump and another motor drive for the rail cart -- all of which were stowed on an external storage platform on the station's central truss.
You can watch all this unfold live here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the NASA TV box on the right side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer, and be sure to refresh this page for periodic updates.
New NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, a veteran shuttle pilot and mission commander, will address the troops with new deputy administrator Lori Garver at noon. It will be the first "all-hands" meeting the new leadership duo has held since their confirmation last week by the U.S. Senate.
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