Spaceflight Now





Atlantis approaching space station to build it bigger
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: May 16, 2010


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The shuttle Atlantis closed in on the International Space Station early Sunday as the astronauts worked through the final stages of a complex two-day rendezvous. Docking is expected around 10:27 a.m. EDT.


Credit: NASA
 
The terminal phase of the rendezvous was expected to begin around 7:40 a.m. with a critical rocket firing to start closing the final 9.2 miles to the space station.

Commander Kenneth Ham said before launch he was looking forward to seeing how the station has grown since his last visit in 2008.

"That first time, you get really busy in the cockpit during the rendezvous," he said in a NASA interview. "There's a whole bunch of stuff you need to get done and at some point in there you actually look out the window when you're close and you see this monstrosity that is out there orbiting the planet. There's that moment of 'Holy cow! What has humanity built up here?' It is amazing and I'm looking forward to that because the station's even bigger than it was last time I was there and it's just a neat thing to look at. It's a reality check."

Pausing about 600 feet directly below the lab complex, Ham plans to oversee a computer assisted 360-degree back-flip maneuver, exposing the shuttle's underside to the station and allowing the lab crew to photograph the protective tiles on the orbiter's belly to look for any signs of damage that might have occurred during launch Friday.

Expedition 23 commander Oleg Kotov, Soichi Noguchi and Timothy Creamer will focus on the heat shield tiles while flight engineer Tracy Caldwell Dyson will concentrate on the shuttle's left wing leading edge panels.

The shuttle's carbon composite nose cap and wing leading edge panels, which experience the most extreme heating during re-entry, were inspected Saturday. But problems with a pan-and-tilt mechanism on the end of the shuttle's inspection boom forced the crew to use backup procedures and they were unable to complete the left wing.

"All of the images will be loaded onto laptops for downlink to the ground in Houston for review by the imagery analysts and engineers to help clear the vehicle and ensure that we have no additional areas of interest that need further review," lead Flight Director Mike Sarafin said before launch.

Mission managers are still assessing what additional work will be required - and when it will be carried out - to complete the Saturday inspection work.

Following the rendezvous pitch maneuver, Ham will guide Atlantis up to a point about 300 feet directly in front of the station, with the shuttle's nose pointed toward deep space and its open cargo bay facing the lab's forward docking port.

"From there, he'll approach along a very narrow, two-and-a-half-degree corridor," Sarafin said. "Once he verifies final alignment at 30 feet, he'll press in and perform the docking."

Ham and his crewmates - pilot Dominic Antonelli, flight engineer Michael Good, Stephen Bowen, Piers Sellers and Garrett Reisman - will be welcomed aboard by Kotov, Noguchi, Creamer, Caldwell Dyson, Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko.

After a safety briefing, the crew will get back to work, transferring spacesuits and other gear needed for the mission's first spacewalk Monday. Sellers and Caldwell Dyson, meanwhile, will use the station's robot arm to pull a cargo pallet out of the shuttle's cargo bay and position it atop the station's power truss.

The integrated cargo carrier holds a spare Ku-band antenna, a support boom, an equipment stowage platform and six new batteries for one of the station's four sets of solar arrays. During a spacewalk Monday by Reisman and Bowen, the spare antenna will be installed, along with the equipment stowage platform.

"Aside from getting all the rendezvous tasks done, when we get on board we need to pull that ICC, that (cargo) rack, out of the payload bay which Piers and Tracy are going to do, pulling that out of the bay and sticking it up on top of space station in preparation for some further arm motions that the ground is going to take care of overnight," Ham said.

"All the while, we're getting our two first spacewalkers, which is Steve Bowen and Garrett Reisman, in the airlock ready for campout, getting their blood chemistry right, overnight to get ready to go out the door the next day. So there are an awful lot of things that have to happen and happen on time so that we can get to bed and get up the next day and go to work."

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


EDT........DD...HH...MM...SS>..EVENT

05/16
03:20 AM...01...13...00...00...STS/ISS crew wakeup
04:25 AM...01...14...05...00...Group B computer powerup
04:40 AM...01...14...20...00...Rendezvous timeline begins
04:50 AM...01...14...30...00...ISS daily planning conference
05:22 AM...01...15...02...07...NH rendezvous rocket firing
06:07 AM...01...15...47...35...NC-4 rendezvous rocket firing
07:30 AM...01...17...10...00...Spacesuit removal from airlock
07:40 AM...01...17...20...00...Ti rendezvous rocket firing
07:55 AM...01...17...34...51...US arrays configured for dock
08:05 AM...01...17...44...51...ISS Ku mask enabled
08:05 AM...01...17...44...51...ISS to prox ops mode
08:18 AM...01...17...57...51...Service module lights on
08:18 AM...01...17...58...31...Sunset
08:30 AM...01...18...09...51...ISS maneuver start
08:35 AM...01...18...14...51...ISS in docking attitude
08:38 AM...01...18...18...36...Range = 10000 ft
08:47 AM...01...18...27...16...Range = 5000 ft
08:52 AM...01...18...32...45...Range = 3000 ft
08:54 AM...01...18...33...51...SM lights off
08:54 AM...01...18...34...44...Sunrise
08:57 AM...01...18...36...54...MC4 rendezvous rocket firing
09:01 AM...01...18...40...54...Range = 1500 ft
09:06 AM...01...18...45...54...Range = 1000 ft
09:09 AM...01...18...48...54...KU to LO (800 ft)
09:10 AM...01...18...49...54...Shuttle directly below station (725 ft)
09:15 AM...01...18...55...06...Range = 600 ft
09:22 AM...01...19...02...22...Noon
09:26 AM...01...19...06...22...RPM start window open
09:26 AM...01...19...06...23...Start pitch maneuver
09:30 am...01...19...10...34...RPM full photo window close
09:34 am...01...19...14...23...End pitch maneuver
09:37 am...01...19...16...59...Initiate torva (575 ft)
09:39 am...01...19...18...58...RPM start window close
09:48 AM...01...19...27...51...Russian arrays feathered
09:48 AM...01...19...28...29...Shuttle directly in front of ISS (310 ft)
09:49 AM...01...19...29...19...Range = 300 ft
09:50 AM...01...19...29...59...Sunset
09:53 AM...01...19...33...29...Range = 250 ft
09:57 AM...01...19...37...39...Range = 200 ft
10:00 AM...01...19...40...09...Range = 170 ft
10:01 AM...01...19...41...49...Range = 150 ft
10:06 AM...01...19...45...59...Range = 100 ft
10:09 AM...01...19...48...59...Range = 75 ft
10:13 AM...01...19...53...09...Range = 50 ft
10:16 AM...01...19...56...29...Range = 30 ft; start stationkeeping
10:21 AM...01...20...01...29...Push to dock
10:25 AM...01...20...05...49...Range = 10 ft
10:26 AM...01...20...06...13...Sunrise

10:27 AM...01...20...07...28...DOCKING

10:40 AM...01...20...20...00...Leak checks
10:54 AM...01...20...33...51...Noon
11:10 AM...01...20...50...00...Orbiter docking system set for ingress
11:10 AM...01...20...50...00...Group B computer powerdown
11:21 AM...01...21...01...28...Sunset
11:40 AM...01...21...20...00...Hatch open
12:25 PM...01...22...05...00...Welcome aboard!
12:30 PM...01...22...10...00...Safety briefing
01:00 PM...01...22...40...00...Spacesuits moved to Quest
01:30 PM...01...23...10...00...SSRMS ICC grapple
01:30 PM...01...23...10...00...EVA-1: Equipment lock preps
01:40 PM...01...23...20...00...REBA checkout
01:50 PM...01...23...30...00...SSRMS ICC unberth
02:00 PM...02...23...40...00...Mission status briefing on NTV
02:20 PM...02...00...00...00...SSRMS installs ICC on POA
02:20 PM...02...00...00...00...EVA-1: Tools configured
03:15 PM...02...00...55...00...EVA-1: Procedures review
04:00 PM...02...01...40...00...Post-MMT briefing on NTV
04:25 PM...02...02...05...00...ISS evening planning conference
04:30 PM...02...02...10...00...Video playback ops
05:45 PM...02...03...25...00...EVA-1: Mask pre-breathe
06:20 PM...02...04...00...00...EVA-1: 10 psi campout begins
06:50 PM...02...04...30...00...ISS crew sleep begins
07:20 PM...02...05...00...00...STS crew sleep begins
08:00 PM...02...05...40...00...Daily highlights reel on NTV


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