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Endeavour headed for linkup with space station today BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: July 17, 2009 
The Endeavour astronauts are closing in on the International Space Station today in the final stages of a rendezvous that began with liftoff Wednesday. The terminal phase of the rendezvous will begin at 11:17 a.m. with a rocket firing to close the final 9.2 miles, setting up a docking at 1:55 p.m.
Using digital cameras equipped with 400 mm and 800 mm telephoto lenses, the station astronauts will photograph the protective tiles on the shuttle's belly to help engineers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston assess the health of the orbiter's heat shield. Endeavour's external tank lost an unusual amount of foam insulation from its central "intertank" region during launch Wednesday, creating debris that struck the shuttle in at least two areas. Engineers do not believe the damage is serious, but the inspection later today will determine if there are any other areas of interest. "Rendezvous is a busy day because besides the rendezvous, there's a spacewalk the next day," Polansky said in a NASA interview. "So what we'll wind up doing is we'll get up, we'll immediately do what we call a 'water dump' because our fuel cells, which generate our electricity, produce a lot of excess water. When we are docked to station, we are limited in the kind of water dumps that we can do because it might impinge upon the equipment up there so we need to go ahead and get a last water dump done. We'll do that early in the day. "We'll do a series of what we call 'burns' to adjust our position in space so that we set ourselves up for a rendezvous. We'll go ahead then and manually fly the rendezvous. There's a team of four of us that work most of the flying and then other crew members come up to help with the docking system as well as taking some photography as we come on board. "We'll dock, make sure that's everything's okay, get a good leak check of the area that we've docked to - to make sure that everything's working properly - and at that point, we'll finally open the hatches, the traditional meet and greet. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of emotion as you see your friends up there and it's always an exciting time to do that. "And then after about five minutes of 'boy, this is really cool!' back to work. So now it's time to get the safety briefing to make sure that as we're docked everybody knows exactly what the layout is because we're not back in Houston and Building 9 in our little simulators any more. We're in a real living, breathing space station and, should anything go wrong, everybody needs to know immediately what they're supposed to do, where the fire bottles are, things like that. "So we'll get a good safety brief and then we have (robotic arm work) right away for some of the folks. We have other folks taking equipment to the airlock, and people are going to do what we call 'camp out' that very night, where they're going to go and start pre-breathing oxygen, get themselves pressurized down to a 10.2 psi within their little airlock and get ready for the next day's spacewalk." The goals of Endeavour's mission are to attach an experiment platform to the Japanese Kibo module, to replace aging solar array batteries and to transfer spare parts and supplies to the station. Astronaut Tim Kopra will join the station crew after docking and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata will join Endeavour's crew for the trip back to Earth at the end of the mission. Five spacewalks are planned, with the first on tap Saturday beginning at 11:58 a.m. Here is an updated timeline of today's activity (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision E of the NASA television schedule): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 07/17 07:03 AM...01...13...00...STS/ISS crew wakeup 08:08 AM...01...14...05...Group B computer powerup 08:18 AM...01...14...15...ISS daily planning conference 08:23 AM...01...14...20...Rendezvous timeline begins 09:42 AM...01...15...39...NC-4 rendezvous rocket firing 10:08 AM...01...16...05...Spacesuits removed from airlock 11:17 AM...01...17...14...TI burn 11:53 AM...01...17...50...Sunset 12:10 PM...01...18...07...ISS in attitude 12:15 PM...01...18...12...Range: 10,000 feet 12:24 PM...01...18...21...Range: 5,000 feet 12:26 PM...01...18...23...Sunrise 12:30 PM...01...18...27...Range: 3,000 feet 12:34 PM...01...18...31...MC-4 rendezvous burn 12:38 PM...01...18...35...Range: 1,500 feet 12:40 PM...01...18...37...RPM start window open 12:43 PM...01...18...40...Range: 1,000 feet 12:46 PM...01...18...43...KU antenna to low power 12:47 PM...01...18...44...+R bar arrival directly below ISS 12:52 PM...01...18...49...Range: 600 feet 12:54 PM...01...18...51...Start pitch maneuver 12:55 PM...01...18...52...Noon 01:02 PM...01...18...59...End pitch maneuver 01:03 PM...01...19...00...RPM full photo window close 01:04 PM...01...19...01...Initiate pitch up maneuver (575 ft) 01:11 PM...01...19...08...RPM start window close 01:16 PM...01...19...13...+V bar arrival; range: 310 feet 01:17 PM...01...19...14...Range: 300 feet 01:21 PM...01...19...18...Range: 250 feet 01:24 PM...01...19...21...Sunset 01:25 PM...01...19...22...Range: 200 feet 01:28 PM...01...19...25...Range: 170 feet 01:29 PM...01...19...26...Range: 150 feet 01:33 PM...01...19...30...Range: 100 feet 01:36 PM...01...19...33...Range: 75 feet 01:41 PM...01...19...38...Range: 50 feet 01:44 PM...01...19...41...Range: 30 feet; start stationkeeping 01:49 PM...01...19...46...End stationkeeping; push to dock 01:53 PM...01...19...50...Range: 10 feet 01:55 PM...01...19...52...DOCKING 01:58 PM...01...19...55...Sunrise 02:08 PM...01...20...05...Leak checks 02:08 PM...01...20...05...Post docking laptop reconfig 02:28 PM...01...20...25...Group B computer powerdown 02:38 PM...01...20...35...Orbiter docking system prepped for ingress 02:58 PM...01...20...55...Hatch open 03:43 PM...01...21...40...Welcome aboard! 03:48 PM...01...21...45...Safety briefing 04:18 PM...01...22...15...Spacesuits transferred to ISS 04:18 PM...01...22...15...Soyuz seatliner transfer/installation 04:53 PM...01...22...50...REBA checkout 04:48 PM...01...22...45...EVA-1: Tools configured 05:28 PM...01...23...25...Playback ops 05:30 PM...01...23...27...Mission status/post-MMT briefing 06:13 PM...02...00...10...Equipment lock preps 06:48 PM...02...00...45...ISS: Sokol suit leak checks 06:58 PM...02...00...55...EVA-1: Procedures review 08:03 PM...02...02...00...ISS: Sokol suit drying 08:03 PM...02...02...00...ISS evening planning conference 09:28 PM...02...03...25...EVA-1: Mask pre-breathe 10:33 PM...02...04...30...ISS crew sleep begins 10:08 PM...02...04...05...EVA-1: 10.2 airlock depress 11:03 PM...02...05...00...STS crew sleep begins
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VIDEO:
NARRATED PREVIEW OF RENDEZVOUS AND DOCKING 