Discovery's astronauts aim to get back to work tonight, hauling supplies and refuse between the shuttle and the International Space Station while preparing for a third and final spacewalk of their mission to the outpost.
Mission specialists Danny Olivas and Christer Fuglesang will be spending the night in the U.S. Quest airlock at the station, where pressure will be reduced to 10.2 psi.
The low-pressure environment will reduce the amount of time it takes to rid nitrogen gas from their bloodstreams, a protocol considered key to avoiding decompression sickness during their spacewalking work.
A large piece of space junk passed within a mile of the station earlier today as the joined crews of the shuttle and the outpost slept.
U.S. Space Command, which tracks natural and manmade space junk in low Earth orbit, had brough the potential conjunction to NASA's attention several days ago.
NASA flight directors determined that no evasive action would be required by the joined shuttle-station complex.
"We calculated a probability of collision of zero. So we knew we were okay," NASA flight director Ron Spencer said. "We were very confident in our tracking of it, so we knew it was going to be a near-miss without a threat of collision."
Coming up in the next several hours:
The 10 astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the joined shuttle-station complex will enjoy a meal together before taking traditional mission photos and holding a joint crew news conference.
The news conference is scheduled to begin at 8:49 p.m. tonight.
You can watch it 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. Refresh this page too for periodic updates.
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