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Astronauts to give Atlantis full post-launch inspection BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: May 15, 2010 
The Atlantis astronauts, awakened at 4:20 a.m. EDT to begin their first full day in space, plan to inspect the shuttle's carbon composite nose cap and wing leading edge panels Saturday and to check out equipment needed for upcoming spacewalks. Two rendezvous rocket firings are planned to fine tune the shuttle's approach to the International Space Station for a docking Sunday morning.
The heat shield inspection, standard fare for post-Columbia shuttle crews, uses an instrumented 50-foot-long boom attached to the end of the ship's robot arm to scan the nose cap and wing leading edge panels to look for any signs of impact damage that might have occurred during the climb to space. "Back in those first couple (post-Columbia) flights when they were doing this, this was considered a very difficult and unique robotics maneuver so a lot of attention was spent on it," commander Ken Ham said in a NASA interview. "Since those flights, we've flown a bunch more. We've a lot more confidence in how this works and at the risk of sounding cavalier ... that task is now almost considered somewhat mundane. The heat shield inspection will be carried out by Ham, pilot Dominic Antonelli, Piers Sellers and Garrett Reisman. Crewmates Michael Good and Stephen Bowen will spend part of the day checking out spacesuits and other equipment needed for upcoming station assembly spacewalks. Later this afternoon, Reisman and Bowen will make sure the crew's rendezvous tools are set up for docking Sunday around 10:27 a.m. "It's a little bit of a long day, a long inspection," Antonelli said of the heat shield examination. "We'll use the space shuttle's robotic (arm), and we'll pick up what we'll call the 'boom.' On the end of that there's a still camera, a laser camera and then also a video camera. We're going to use that to inspect the leading edge of both wings and the nose. "It's a long series of automated robotic procedures. We'll put the arm and the boom in a starting configuration, hit 'go,' and it should run through an auto sequence kind of thing to scan the leading edge of the wings. We have to do the top, the front and the bottom so it'll be several of these in a row, and it'll take most of the day. We'll (take) turns either flying the arm or running the checklist or keeping the extra computers and data recording going. It's kind of a three-person job. Then we'll rotate out because it's a bit of a long day." A mission status briefing is planned for 2 p.m., followed by a post-Mission Management Team briefing at 4 p.m. to provide a status report on the progress of work to access the shuttle's overall health following Friday's launch. Here is an updated timeline of today's activity (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision A of the NASA television schedule; best viewed with fixed-width font): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 05/15 04:20 AM...00...14...00...Crew wakeup 06:25 AM...00...16...05...OMS pod survey 06:45 AM...00...16...25...Ergometer setup 07:15 AM...00...16...55...Shuttle arm (SRMS) unberths inspection boom (OBSS) 07:20 AM...00...17...00...Window 4 minicam downlink 07:14 AM...00...17...13...NC-2 rendezvous rocket firing 07:40 AM...00...17...20...Spacesuit checkout preps 07:45 AM...00...17...25...SAFER emergency jetpack checkout 08:10 AM...00...17...50...Spacesuit checkout 08:30 AM...00...18...10...OBSS starboard wing survey 10:10 AM...00...19...50...Crew meals begin 10:15 AM...00...19...55...Middeck transfer preps 10:35 AM...00...20...15...OBSS nose cap survey 11:10 AM...00...20...50...Spacesuit prepped for transfer to station 12:25 PM...00...22...05...OBSS port wing survey 02:00 PM...00...23...40...Mission status briefing on NTV 02:40 PM...01...00...20...SRMS berths OBSS 02:45 PM...01...00...25...Rendezvous tools checkout 03:15 PM...01...00...55...Laser scan data (LDRI) downlink 03:55 PM...01...01...35...Centerline camera setup 04:00 PM...01...01...40...Post-MMT briefing on NTV 04:25 PM...01...02...05...Orbiter docking system ring extension 05:35 PM...01...03...15...NC-3 rendezvous rocket firing 07:20 PM...01...05...00...Crew sleep begins 08:00 PM...01...05...40...Daily highlights reel on NTV   The final planned flight of space shuttle Atlantis is symbolized in the official embroidered crew patch for STS-132. Available in our store! U.S. SHOPPERS | WORLDWIDE
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