The Endeavour astronauts have limbered up the International Space Station's robotic arm for a half-day of construction crane operations some 220 miles above the planet.
Endeavour mission specialist Julie Payette of the Canadian Space Agency and mission commander Mark Polansky are using the Canadian-built arm to hoist an experiment carrier from the shuttle's cargo bay.
The Japanese Experiment Logistics Module -- Exposed Section is known by the acronym JLE and you'll hear the crew refer to it as "jelly."
Payette and Polansky then will hand the carrier off to the shuttle's 50-foot robot arm, which is being operated by Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and station flight engineer Tim Kopra.
Wakata and Kopra then will install the carrier on the back porch of the station's Japanese Kibo science research facility. The experiments will be put in place Thursday with the robotic arm on Japanese Kibo lab module. That operation will mark the first time three different robotic arms have been employed during a single station assembly mission.
Kopra replaced Wakata -- the first Japanese astronaut to serve a long tour on the station -- on the outpost. Now a member of the Endeavour crew, Wakata -- who launched to the station on Discovery in March -- will return to Earth aboard the shuttle.
You can follow the action right 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.
Check out the latest revision -- Rev J -- of the NASA TV Schedule for details on the timing of major mission milestones.
Click here for the crew's detailed timeline in this Flight Day 7 Execute Package. It was beamed up to the crew earlier today.
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