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Shuttle leaves station today BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: March 25, 2009 The Discovery astronauts prepared for undocking today, working through a busy timeline of packing and experiment sample transfers from the space station to the shuttle. After a final joint meal with their space station colleagues, the combined crews will hold a brief farewell ceremony around 1 p.m. before closing hatches for the shuttle's departure at 3:53 p.m. EDT. Joining the shuttle crew for the trip home will be outgoing space station flight engineer Sandra Magnus, who is wrapping up a four-month stay in space. Her replacement, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, will remain behind in her place with Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke and flight engineer Yury Lonchakov. "I appreciate everyone's help, everyone's support, everyone's patience and understanding as we've done the work up here and I really look forward to seeing you all on the ground," Magnus radioed today during her final space station planning conference. "So I'll say goodbye from the space station this last time." "Goodbye, Sandy," mission control replied. "Have a safe trip home." Fincke and Lonchakov plan to return to Earth April 7 aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft that carried them into orbit last October. Their replacements, Expedition 19 commander Gennady Padalka and NASA flight engineer Michael Barratt, are scheduled for launch Thursday at 7:49 a.m. from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard the Soyuz TMA-14 ferry craft. If all goes well, Padalka, Barratt and U.S. space tourist Charles Simonyi will dock with the station at 9:14 a.m. Saturday, about four-and-a-half hours before the shuttle Discovery lands back at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Simonyi, making his second $35 million trip to the station, will return to Earth with Fincke and Lonchakov. To make way for the Soyuz mission, Discovery's astronauts had to undock today at the latest. Shuttle crews normally say farewell and close hatches the day before undocking to make departure day a bit more relaxed, but the Soyuz deadline prompted NASA managers to replan the Discovery crew's departure, delaying hatch closure and the transfer of frozen experiment samples until the last minute. The experiment samples must remain frozen. Some will be packed in a shuttle freezer, but the rest will be packed in double cold bags. The delayed hatch closure and cold pack transfers will give the samples the maximum possible shelf life aboard the shuttle in case of any weather-related landing delays. Along with the experiment samples, the Discovery astronauts also will be bringing water samples back to Earth from the station's new urine recycling system. The water recovery system has had problems since it was first activated late last year, but a new distillation assembly centrifuge installed during the shuttle mission appears to be working normally and engineers are hopeful the samples will confirm the system can be used by future station crews. This morning, the astronauts will pack "some of the last items of cargo that are going to be transferred from the space station to the shuttle," said Flight Director Kwatsi Alibaruho. "That includes some of the scientific samples that are going to be coming back in those double cold bags we talked about earlier. The crew will also take the final water samples that we have from the WRS, the water recovery system, so those samples can be returned home and examined to perhaps clear the system for use by a six person crew." Padalka, Barratt and Wakata will prepare the lab complex for the arrival of three more full-time crew members - Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne of Belgium and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk - in late May. "The station's in great shape," deputy Program Manager Kirk Shireman said Tuesday in Baikonur. "We're very excited about having the new solar arrays there. The urine processor went through the first wet cycle yesterday and it ran for about four hours, very successfully. Of course, we'll be testing it continuously here over the weeks coming before we launch the six-person crew. So again, the space station couldn't be in better shape, we're very pleased with how things are going." After the shuttle-station "stack" is maneuvered into the undocking orientation with Discovery's belly facing the direction of travel, the docking system on the forward port will disengage at 3:53 p.m. With pilot Dominic "Tony" Antonelli at the controls, Discovery will pull straight away from the station's forward docking port and then loop around the lab complex for a photo survey, giving flight controllers and the public their first wide-angle look at the station with its completed solar power system. The primary goal of Discovery's mission was installation of a fourth and final set of arrays on the right end of the station's main power truss. "I'll be very excited," Antonelli said in a NASA interview. "First, because I'll get to get my first crack at flying the space shuttle, which is kind of what I'm in the business to do. So I'm really looking forward to the undocking and separation and the whole fly around, getting to take pictures of the space station. (We will) get pictures now for the first time looking like how the artists have been drawing it for so many years." Alibaruho said the fly-around is "partially to get good imagery of the space station, not just for posterity, but also to inspect the vehicle for any damage that we may not have been able to see with the space station's external cameras. We're not looking for anything specifically, just sort of a general photographic survey to inspect the general condition of the space station as well as see the fruits of the astronauts' labor." Said shuttle commander Lee Archambault: "When we pull out for the undock and fly around, which our pilot Tony Antonelli will be doing, at that point, really for the first time we'll probably look at the station and say, 'there it is.' "It'll be a real sense of mission accomplishment. We've done our job. We've delivered the S6 truss. We've installed it. It's out there working and producing power for the space station. "It's the first time that we'll really absorb it all and, by the way, that's also the first time we'll actually be able to send pictures to the ground, both stills and video, showing the space station in its newest configuration. When we do all that, the sense of accomplishment will be phenomenal." Here is an updated timeline of today's activity (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision O of the NASA television schedule and the undocking timeline): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 03/25/09 06:13 AM...09...10...30...Crew wakeup 07:43 AM...09...12...00...ISS daily planning conference 09:13 AM...09...13...30...Post spacewalk reconfig 09:43 AM...09...14...00...Water samples 10:18 AM...09...14...35...Experiment cold bag pack 10:53 AM...09...15...10...Rendezvous tools checkout 11:38 AM...09...15...55...Experiment cold bag transfer 11:53 AM...09...16...10...Joint crew meal 12:53 PM...09...17...10...Farewell ceremony 01:08 PM...09...17...25...Egress and hatch closure 01:38 PM...09...17...55...Leak checks 02:23 PM...09...18...40...Group B computer powerup 02:37 PM...09...18...54...Maneuver to undocking attitude 02:42 PM...09...18...59...Sunrise 03:06 PM...09...19...23...ISS in undockling orientation 03:10 PM...09...19...27...Noon 03:23 PM...09...19...40...U.S. Ku-band antenna parked 03:33 PM...09...19...50...PMA-2 prepped for undocking 03:34 PM...09...19...51...Russian arrays feathered 03:37 PM...09...19...54...Sunset 03:53 PM...09...20...10...UNDOCKING 03:54 PM...09...20...11...Initial separation 03:54 PM...09...20...11...ISS holds attitude 03:58 PM...09...20...15...Range: 50 feet; reselect -X jets 03:58 PM...09...20...15...PMA-2 depressurization 04:00 PM...09...20...17...Range 75 feet; low Z 04:09 PM...09...20...26...Russian arrays resume sun track 04:13 PM...09...20...30...Sunrise 04:22 PM...09...20...39...Range: 400 feet; start fly around 04:31 PM...09...20...48...Range: 600 feet 04:33 PM...09...20...50...Shuttle directly above ISS 04:41 PM...09...20...58...Noon 04:43 PM...09...21...00...U.S. arrays resume sun track 04:43 PM...09...21...00...ISS in TEA attitude 04:45 PM...09...21...02...Shuttle directly behind ISS 04:56 PM...09...21...13...Shuttle directly below ISS 05:08 PM...09...21...25...Separation burn No. 1 05:09 PM...09...21...26...Sunset 05:36 PM...09...21...53...Separation burn No. 2 05:38 PM...09...21...55...Post undocking computer reconfig 05:53 PM...09...22...10...Group B computer powerdown 05:53 PM...09...22...10...ISS management conference 06:00 PM...09...22...17...Mission status briefing 06:18 PM...09...22...35...Undocking playback ops 06:28 PM...09...22...45...ISS daily planning conference 07:43 PM...10...00...00...Crew choice downlink 08:04 PM...10...00...21...JAXA PAO event 09:00 PM...10...01...17...JAXA PAO event replay 10:13 PM...10...02...30...Crew sleep begins 11:00 PM...10...03...17...Daily highlights reel
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VIDEO:
SOYUZ MOVED TO LAUNCH PAD FOR EXPEDITION 19 