Spaceflight Now




New solar array truss pulled from shuttle cargo bay
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: September 11, 2006

With only four inches or so of clearance, astronauts Dan Burbank and Chris Ferguson, operating the shuttle Atlantis' 50-foot-long robot arm, carefully lifted a 35,000-pound solar array truss from the orbiter's cargo bay today, maneuvered it safely past the ship's heat shield inspection boom and out over the shuttle's left wing.


The truss is hoisted out of Atlantis' payload bay this morning. Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now
 
Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean, operating the space station's more massive Canadarm 2 from inside the Destiny laboratory module, then grappled the massive payload in a high-flying handoff, setting the stage for attachment to the station's unfinished solar array truss Tuesday.

"There you have it, the great Canadian handshake," MacLean called around 10:50 a.m. Both robot arms were built in Canada and both were critical to today's operation.

A few moments later, the shuttle arm released the 45-foot-long $372 million P3/P4 truss segment, leaving it firmly in the grip of Canadarm 2, perched on the far left end of the station's unfinished truss at an anchor point known as work site 7.

The station's solar array truss runs at right angles to the long axis of the outpost, which is made up of four pressurized modules connected end to end. U.S. and Russian airlock modules are mounted on the right side of that long axis and on the bottom respectively.

The central segment of the truss, attached to the top of the Destiny lab module, is known as S0 for "starboard zero." Two other sections, known as S1 and P1, are attached to the right and left sides of S0 respectively.

The station design originally sported two more segments - S2 and P2 - but they were eliminated earlier in the lab's development.

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Additional coverage for subscribers:
VIDEO: TRUSS HANDED FROM SHUTTLE ARM TO STATION ARM PLAY
VIDEO: ARM MANEUVERS TRUSS OVER SHUTTLE WING PLAY
VIDEO: TRUSS SLOWLY LIFTED OUT OF PAYLOAD BAY PLAY
VIDEO: ATLANTIS' ARM GRAPPLES THE TRUSS PLAY
VIDEO: TODAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING DIAL-UP | BROADBAND
VIDEO: ATLANTIS WELCOMED ABOARD THE STATION PLAY
VIDEO: DOCKING REPLAY FROM CAMERA ON SHUTTLE ARM PLAY
VIDEO: SHUTTLE ATLANTIS DOCKS TO THE STATION PLAY
VIDEO: ATLANTIS' BREATH-TAKING FLIP MANEUVER PLAY
VIDEO: CREW'S CAMCORDER FOOTAGE OF EXTERNAL TANK PLAY
VIDEO: NARRATED ANIMATION PREVIEWING TRUSS UNBERTHING PLAY
VIDEO: NARRATED ANIMATION PREVIEWING THE DOCKING PLAY
VIDEO: NARRATED ANIMATION OF PAYLOAD BAY CONFIGURATION PLAY
MORE: STS-115 VIDEO COVERAGE
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The new P3/P4 truss segment, made up of a massive rotary joint (P3) and a new set of solar arrays (P4) will remain suspended on the end of the station's robot arm overnight. If all goes well, MacLean and station astronaut Jeff Williams will maneuver it into position just a few inches from the end of the P1 truss early Tuesday

After motorized bolts are engaged to lock P3 to P1, Joe Tanner Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper will begin a complex spacewalk to remove launch restraints and to wire the new segment into the station's power system. That's a critical step, because the new components need station power to operate internal heaters until the new arrays can be deployed later.

"This truss has a lot of electronic components on it, a lot of bits and pieces that we don't want to get cold," said lead flight director Paul Dye. "So we have a clock that's running and we want to be able to get the umbilicals hooked up on the EVA tomorrow in order to make sure we can keep that thing alive and in good shape."

With the completion of the handoff maneuver between the shuttle arm and Canadarm 2, the Atlantis astronauts wrapped up an extremely busy day in space that began with a series of rendezvous rocket firings to catch up with the station, a spectacular end-over-end flip for photography of the shuttle's heat shield and finally, docking with the station.

"It was really spectacular stuff today," said Dye. "The rendezvous this morning was probably just about as perfect as a rendezvous as I have ever been a part of. Everything was just dead on, the timing was great, the tracks were perfect, Brent did a masterful job along with his crew. ... My prop(ulsion) officer was real happy because he said Brent used well below the mean amount of prop that we usually allocate for a rendezvous.

"In general, they docked pretty much on time and that was the only thing they did on time today because everywhere else they've been ahead of sked by a significant amount. ... Again, this is an extremely busy day, one of the fullest days I've ever put together on paper for a mission and they're handling it extremely well."

After a review of the procedures planned for Tuesday's spacewalk, Tanner and Piper plan to seal themselves inside the station's Quest airlock module where they will spend the night at a reduced pressure of 10.2 pounds per square inch to help purge nitrogen from their blood streams.

The so-called "camp out" procedure will save an hour of preparation time and help prevent the bends when the astronauts spend the day in their 5-psi spacesuits. Piper, a former Navy diver, is more familiar than most with the need to guard against decompression sickness.

"One of the things about doing EVAs in space is you have the opposite effect of going diving," she said in a NASA interview. "When you go diving, you go from the Earth's atmosphere [atmospheric pressure] to a higher atmosphere and so when you come back up you have to decompress. Well, the same thing happens when you go out on a spacewalk because you're inside the space station at 14.7 [pounds per square inch] nominally, and when you go out on your spacewalks, you're only down at 4.3 psi.

"We've taken care of that on the space shuttle," she said. "The EVA crew members get locked in the airlock the night before, they bring the pressure in the airlock down to 10.2 psi, and so instead of living in the shuttle at 10.2 you're just living in the airlock at 10.2. Since you're locked in there, it's been given the name of 'camp out', because you have to take your sleeping bags in there and you're, in a sense, camping out.

"By doing that, we're able to start our EVAs one hour earlier, and so that means now we're not crunched at the end of the day. When you come back in from an EVA you have to clean up your suits and put all your tools away, and all of that takes time. What happened in the past is that, that would run into the crew member's sleep time. And we don't want to compromise our crews for sleep because that'll just lead to fatigue by the end of the mission. So in doing the camp out, if we're able to get out the door one hour earlier, then that gives us one more hour at the end of the day so we can finish all of our tasks and not have to run into our sleep period."

The astronauts are scheduled to go to bed at 4:15 p.m. today and wake up at 12:15 a.m. Tuesday to begin spacewalk preparations. If all goes well, Tanner and Piper will exit Quest, after attachment of the P3/P4 truss, around 5:15 a.m. The spacewalk is expected to last about six-and-a-half hours.

A spacewalk by MacLean and Burbank is planned Wednesday to complete activation and checkout of the new truss segment and if all goes well, the giant arrays will be unfurled Thursday, stretching 240 feet from tip to tip. A third spacewalk, by Tanner and Piper, is on tap Friday to carry out communications system upgrades.

Spaceflight Now Plus
Additional coverage for subscribers:
VIDEO: BRIEFING ON TANK'S PERFORMANCE DIAL-UP | BROADBAND
VIDEO: TANK'S ONBOARD CAMERA LIFTOFF TO SEPARATION PLAY
VIDEO: FLIGHT DIRECTOR EXPLAINS INSPECTIONS PLAY
VIDEO: SUNDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING DIAL-UP | BROADBAND

VIDEO: LAUNCH OF ATLANTIS! PLAY
VIDEO: SHEDDING FOAM MAY HAVE HIT ATLANTIS PLAY
VIDEO: ONBOARD VIEW OF EXTERNAL TANK SEPARATION PLAY
VIDEO: INSIDE MISSION CONTROL DURING LAUNCH PLAY
VIDEO: STATION CREW TOLD VISITORS EN ROUTE PLAY
VIDEO: HOUSTON RADIOS DEBRIS REPORT TO CREW PLAY
VIDEO: POST-LAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE DIAL-UP | BROADBAND
VIDEO: QUICK-LOOK BRIEFING ON DEBRIS DIAL-UP | BROADBAND

LAUNCH REPLAYS:
VIDEO: BEACH MOUND TRACKER PLAY
VIDEO: CAMERA IN FRONT OF PAD PLAY
VIDEO: BANANA CREEK VIEWING SITE PLAY
VIDEO: VEHICLE ASSEMBLY BUILDING ROOF PLAY
VIDEO: PAD 39B SIDE PERIMETER PLAY
VIDEO: PLAYALINDA BEACH TRACKER PLAY
VIDEO: PLAYALINDA BEACH ZOOM PLAY
VIDEO: UCS 23 TRACKER PLAY
VIDEO: UCS 11 TRACKER PLAY

VIDEO: MISSION SPECIALIST 4 STEVE MACLEAN BOARDS ATLANTIS PLAY
VIDEO: MISSION SPECIALIST 3 HEIDE PIPER BOARDS PLAY
VIDEO: MISSION SPECIALIST 2 DAN BURBANK BOARDS PLAY
VIDEO: MISSION SPECIALIST 1 JOE TANNER BOARDS PLAY
VIDEO: PILOT CHRIS FERGUSON BOARDS PLAY
VIDEO: COMMANDER BRENT JETT BOARDS PLAY

VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS EMERGE FROM CREW QUARTERS PLAY
VIDEO: CREW SUITS UP FOR LAUNCH TO SPACE PLAY
VIDEO: FINAL INSPECTION TEAM CHECKS ATLANTIS PLAY
VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS READY FOR SECOND LAUNCH TRY PLAY
MORE: STS-115 VIDEO COVERAGE
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