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STS-120 day 5 highlights

Highlights from Flight Day 5 see the astronauts enter into the newly-installed Harmony module.

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STS-120 day 4 highlights

The Flight Day 4 highlights movie shows Harmony's attachment to the station and the Discovery mission's first spacewalk.

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STS-120 day 3 highlights

This movie shows the highlights from Flight Day 3 as Discovery docked to the space station.

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STS-120 day 2 highlights

Flight Day 2 of Discovery's mission focused on heat shield inspections. This movie shows the day's highlights.

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STS-120 launch videos

Check out all angles of space shuttle Discovery's launch with our extensive video collection.

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STS-120 day 1 highlights

The highlights from shuttle Discovery's launch day are packaged into this movie.

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STS-120: Crew arrival

The space shuttle Discovery astronauts arrive at the Kennedy Space Center for their countdown to launch.

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STS-120: The programs

In advance of shuttle Discovery's STS-120 mission to the station, managers from both programs discuss the flight.

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STS-120: The mission

Discovery's trip to the station will install the Harmony module and move the P6 solar wing truss. The flight directors present a detailed overview of STS-120.

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STS-120: Spacewalks

Five spacewalks are planned during Discovery's STS-120 assembly mission to the station. Lead spacewalk officer Dina Contella previews the EVAs.

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 EVA 1 summary
 EVA 2 summary
 EVA 3 summary
 EVA 4 summary
 EVA 5 summary

The Discovery crew

The Discovery astronauts, led by commander Pam Melroy, meet the press in the traditional pre-flight news conference.

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Astronauts gear up for dramatic spacewalk
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: October 28, 2007

Running an hour ahead of schedule, astronauts Scott Parazynski and Dan Tani suited up and made final preparations for a dramatic six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk today to disconnect a 35,000-pound solar array segment for a two-day move to the far left end of the space station's main power truss.

The port 6, or P6, truss segment will remain on the end of the space station's robot arm overnight before being handed off to the shuttle's arm on Monday. The station arm then will ride a transporter to the far left end of the power truss and re-grapple P6. If all goes well, the arm will maneuver the truss into position for attachment to the P5 segment Tuesday during the crew's third spacewalk.

With the arm fully extended, operator Stephanie Wilson will have little or no visibility of the attachment interface. Instead, she will rely on guidance from spacewalkers Parazynski and astronaut Doug Wheelock. Once the truss segment is bolted in place, it's two huge solar panels will be re-extended to accomplish one of the primary goals of Discovery's mission.

"It's a big truss," lead flight director Rick LaBrode said Saturday. "Putting it outboard of P5 is pretty tricky. The robotic ops involved are complex, the arm is pretty nearly reached out and you're working essentially at the very end of its capability. And then the visuals are non existent. So for the most part, we're relying on the (spacewalkers to guide) it into place. So you have this big truss, the arm's fully extended and you're trying to thread a needle without really good visuals. So it is extremely complex, but ... I have every bit of confidence we're bgoing to pull this off."

Said Wheelock in an interview with CBS News: "Our confidence level is very high. We're very excited, we've trained and trained for this task and we are ready. We're even ready for any contingencies we might see. We're very excited about our spacewalk (Sunday) with Scott and Dan going out the door. (Stephanie Wilson) and I will be backing them up on robotics and we're just real, real excited."

For today's excursion, Parazynski and Tani, after disconnecting P6, will focus on outfitting the newly installed Harmony module. Tani also will spend an hour or so inspecting a massive rotary joint on the right side of the power truss to look for any signs of whatever might be causing excessive friction in the mechanism that turns outboard solar panels to track the sun.

"We're seeing some increased currents, which are indicative of some increased friction on that joint," said Kirk Shireman, deputy manager of the space station program. "We've collected most of the data we can collect with the sensors that we have in place and what we need to do is get some visual inspection of that joint. So ... we made a decisoin to send one of the crew members out to that interface during EVA-2 and actually go 360 degrees around that joint and look at specific bolts and thermal blankets and make sure they're all in configuration."

For today's spacewalk, Parazynski (call sign EV-1) will be wearing a spacesuit with red stripes around the legs. Tani's suit has broken red stripes. His call sign is EV-3.

This is the 94th spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance since assembly began in 1998, the 17th so far this year and the second of five planned for Discovery's mission. Going into today's excursion, 73 astronauts and cosmonauts representing the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, Germany, France and Sweden had logged 574 hours and 13 minutes of EVA time building and maintaining the lab complex.

Here is an updated timeline of today's activity (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision D of the NASA television schedule):


EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT

10/28/07
01:08 AM...04...13...30...STS/ISS crew wakeup
01:43 AM...04...14...05...EVA-2: Airlock repress to 14.7 psi
02:53 AM...04...15...15...EVA-2: Campout EVA prep
04:23 AM...04...16...45...EVA-2: Spacesuit purge
04:38 AM...04...17...00...Station arm (SSRMS): walkoff lab to mobile transporter
04:38 AM...04...17...00...SSRMS: ungrapples lab module
04:38 AM...04...17...00...EVA-2: Spacesuit pre-breathe
04:53 AM...04...17...15...SSRMS: grapples P6
05:28 AM...04...17...50...EVA-2: Crew lock depressurization
06:03 AM...04...18...25...EVA-2: Airlock egress
06:18 AM...04...18...40...EVA-2: Disconnect Z1/P6 umbilicals
06:43 AM...04...19...05...EVA-2: EV-1: Detach P6 solar array
06:58 AM...04...19...20...EVA-2: EV-3: Detach P6 solar array
07:13 AM...04...19...35...Crew meals begin
08:03 AM...04...20...25...EVA-2: EV-3: Airlock ops
08:13 AM...04...20...35...EVA-2: EV-1: Node 2 outfitting
08:13 AM...04...20...35...SSRMS: P6 demate
08:43 AM...04...21...05...EVA-2: EV-3: Starboard SARJ inspection
09:43 AM...04...22...05...EVA-2: EV-3: S1 SFU
10:03 AM...04...22...25...EVA-1: EV-3: Spare power switching unit installation
10:13 AM...04...22...35...EVA-2: EV-3: Circuit breaker replacement
10:43 AM...04...23...05...EVA-2: Node 2 grapple fixture installation
11:58 AM...05...00...20...EVA-2: EV-1: Node 2 outfitting
12:18 PM...05...00...40...EVA-2: Airlock ingress
12:38 PM...05...01...00...EVA-2: Airlock repressurization
12:48 PM...05...01...10...Spacesuit servicing
02:30 PM...05...02...52...Mission status briefing on NASA TV
04:08 PM...05...04...30...ISS crew sleep begins
04:38 PM...05...05...00...STS crew sleep begins
05:00 PM...05...05...22...Video highlights reel on NASA TV
10:30 PM...05...10...52...Flight director update on NASA TV

Designed as the sixth and final segment of the port, or left, side of the station's main power truss, P6 was mounted at the center of the station in December 2000 to provide power to the U.S. segment during the initial stages of assembly.

Now, with identical solar panels in place on the left and right sides of the main power truss, NASA needs to move P6 to its permanent position on the far left end of the beam. The segment's huge arrays, stretching 240 feet from tip to tip, were stowed during shuttle missions last December and June. Power and cooling lines were disconnected during an August flight, setting the stage for the massive truss's detachment, relocation and re-extension during Discovery's mission.

Complicating the work, the station's robot arm cannot reach far enough on its own to make the move. So the station arm, after handing P6 off to the shuttle's space crane, will be moved by the station's mobile transporter to the far end of the power truss. At that point, the shuttle arm will hand the truss segment back to the station arm and Parazynski and Wheelock, making their third spacewalk by that point, will oversee its attachment to the P5 truss segment.

"Moving the P6 solar array will be a major activity," shuttle commander Pam Melroy said in a NASA interview. "On our second spacewalk - our first spacewalk is all about node 2 - we'll be using the robotic arm in one location to actually reach around and pull P6 off ... with the assistance of our spacewalkers.

"Once the P6 has been detached from the space station, then the robotic arm will move it around to the port side of the shuttle, at which point it will be handed off to the shuttle arm. The shuttle robotic arm will take control of the P6 truss while the space station robotic arm is reconfigured and rolled out on the mobile transporter, the mobile platform, all the way to the far end of the port truss. And then, we'll use the station arm to take it back and install it in its final location.

"This is pretty nearly the design-limiting case for the robotic arm of the space station, so it's out at its full extension, trying to get that truss out there," Melroy said. "We'll have the help of the spacewalkers on the third spacewalk to do that. So, all these activities will actually span three days, three full days, two spacewalks with robotics in the middle."

Last December, attempts to stow the folding blankets making up one side of the P6 array ran into problems when several of the slats making up the blankets folded the wrong way along their creases. The astronauts ultimately were successful and engineers don't anticipate major problems re-extending the arrays.

They'd better be right. The station's robot arm will be fully extended just to attach P6 to P5. It will not have the reach necessary to position a spacewalker beyond the lowest few feet of the huge arrays if any major problems are encountered.

"One of perhaps the most audacious things we've ever done in space is this P6 solar array truss relocation," said Parazynski, an emergency room physician and veteran spacewalker making his fifth shuttle flight. "We're powering down this major element, something that we've never done before, basically shutting off the lights, shutting off the computers, turning off the cooling, unbolting it, disconnecting all the fluid and electrical and data lines and then via a process of EVA and very complex robotics we're going to take it to the very tip of the space station and then reverse the process: bolt it together, hook up connectors, deploy solar arrays, deploy a radiator.

"One of the things I love about NASA is we plan for success but we prepare for failure. And so we are very well prepared. A lot of people, a lot of smart rocket scientists around the Johnson Space Center ... have spent a lot of time figuring out what could go wrong and what we might do to address those things. We have a very long list of procedures we can run if things don't go exactly to plan."

A fourth and final set of solar arrays - S6 - will be mounted on the starboard, or right, side of the main truss during a shuttle flight next year.

Spaceflight Now Plus
Additional coverage for subscribers:
VIDEO: PREVIEW OF SUNDAY'S SPACEWALK PLAY
VIDEO: BIOGRAPHY MOVIE ON DISCOVERY'S ASTRONAUTS PLAY
VIDEO: BIOGRAPHY MOVIE ON EXPEDITION 16 CREW PLAY
VIDEO: BIOGRAPHY ON NEW EXPEDITION 16 MEMBER DAN TANI PLAY

VIDEO: THE FLIGHT DAY 5 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE PLAY
VIDEO: CREW INTERVIEWED BY CBS NEWS PLAY
VIDEO: CREW INTERVIEWED BY FOX NEWS PLAY
VIDEO: CREW INTERVIEWED BY WHAM-TV PLAY
VIDEO: SATURDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS ENTER HARMONY FOR FIRST TIME PLAY
VIDEO: CREW COMMENTS FROM INSIDE HARMONY PLAY

VIDEO: THE FLIGHT DAY 4 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE PLAY
VIDEO: POST-EVA MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: FIRST STS-120 SPACEWALK CONCLUDES PLAY
VIDEO: ROBOT ARM INSTALLS HARMONY ON THE STATION PLAY
VIDEO: HARMONY MODULE LIFTED OUT OF PAYLOAD BAY PLAY
VIDEO: S-BAND ANTENNA STOWED IN DISCOVERY'S BAY PLAY
VIDEO: WHEELOCK RIDES STATION ARM WITH ANTENNA PLAY
VIDEO: MISSION STS-120'S SPACEWALK NO. 1 BEGINS PLAY

VIDEO: ANIMATED PREVIEW OF HARMONY INSTALLATION PLAY
VIDEO: NARRATED ANIMATION OF SHUTTLE PAYLOAD BAY PLAY
VIDEO: HARMONY'S PRE-LAUNCH PREPS AT THE CAPE PLAY
VIDEO: BACKGROUND INFO ON HARMONY MODULE PLAY
VIDEO: PREVIEW OF FRIDAY'S SPACEWALK PLAY

VIDEO: THURSDAY MANAGEMENT TEAM NEWS BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: POST-DOCKING MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: INSPECTION BOOM HANDED BETWEEN ROBOT ARMS PLAY
VIDEO: SHUTTLE CREW WELCOMED ABOARD THE STATION PLAY
VIDEO: RING BETWEEN THE DOCKING PORTS RETRACTED PLAY
VIDEO: REPLAY OF DOCKING FROM PAYLOAD BAY CAMERAS PLAY
VIDEO: SHUTTLE DISCOVERY DOCKS TO THE STATION PLAY
VIDEO: DISCOVERY PERFORMS 360-DEGREE BACKFLIP PLAY
VIDEO: SHUTTLE APPROACHES STATION FROM BELOW PLAY
VIDEO: NARRATED PREVIEW OF THE DOCKING PLAY

VIDEO: THE FLIGHT DAY 2 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE PLAY
VIDEO: BRIEFING ON LAUNCH IMAGERY AND TANK'S PERFORMANCE PLAY
VIDEO: WEDNESDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: HEAT SHIELD INSPECTIONS EXPLAINED PLAY
VIDEO: THE FLIGHT DAY 1 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE PLAY
VIDEO: INSIDE MISSION CONTROL DURING LAUNCH PLAY

VIDEO: DISCOVERY'S LAUNCH AS SEEN LIVE PLAY
VIDEO: EXTERNAL TANK CAMERA FROM LIFTOFF TO ORBIT PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: VAB ROOF PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: KSC RUNWAY PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: BEACH TRACKER PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: UCS-23 WIDESCREEN PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PLAYALINDA WIDESCREEN PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: WEST TOWER PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PRESS SITE PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 009 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 041 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 049 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 050 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 051 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 054 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 060 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 061 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 063 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 070 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 071 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA UCS-12 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA UCS-15 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA CS-1 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA CS-2 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA CS-6 PLAY

VIDEO: THE CREW DEPARTS QUARTERS FOR THE PAD PLAY
VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS SUITS UP ON LAUNCH MORNING PLAY
VIDEO: A LOOK BACK AT SHUTTLE DISCOVERY'S HISTORY PLAY
VIDEO: PAD 39A'S ROTATING GANTRY MOVED BACK PLAY
VIDEO: INTERVIEW CLIPS WITH THE ASTRONAUTS PLAY
VIDEO: MONDAY MORNING'S STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: PRE-LAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE PLAY
VIDEO: SUNDAY COUNTDOWN STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: SATURDAY COUNTDOWN STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: WATCH THE CREW'S ARRIVAL FOR LAUNCH PLAY
VIDEO: NEWS CONFERENCE AFTER FLIGHT READINESS REVIEW PLAY
VIDEO: SHUTTLE DISCOVERY ROLLS TO LAUNCH PAD 39A PLAY
VIDEO: CRANE HOISTS DISCOVERY FOR MATING TO TANK PLAY
VIDEO: DISCOVERY MOVED TO THE VEHICLE ASSEMBLY BUILDING PLAY
VIDEO: HYDRAULIC SEALS REPLACED ON LANDING GEAR STRUT PLAY
VIDEO: FUEL TANK ATTACHED TO SOLID ROCKET BOOSTERS PLAY
VIDEO: FOAM REMOVED FROM FUEL TANK FEEDLINE BRACKETS PLAY

VIDEO: STS-120 MISSION OVERVIEW BRIEFING PART 1 | PART 2
VIDEO: PREVIEW OF THE MISSION'S FIVE SPACEWALKS PLAY
VIDEO: DISCOVERY'S ASTRONAUTS MEET THE PRESS PLAY
VIDEO: BRIEFING ON SHUTTLE AND ISS PROGRAMS PLAY
MORE: STS-120 VIDEO COVERAGE
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