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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 
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.
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   The final planned flight of space shuttle Atlantis is symbolized in the official embroidered crew patch for STS-132. 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