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Atlantis nears space station BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: September 11, 2006 The shuttle Atlantis is closing in on the interational space station this morning for a linkup that will kick off a busy week of work to attach and deploy a $372 million set of solar arrays. Docking is expected around 6:46 a.m. "Welcome to a wonderful day in micro gravity and thanks for your excellent work!" flight controllers said in a morning message to the crew. "Today your extraterrestrial peers are looking forward to greeting you and to getting your help to upgrade their home! Have a smooth docking!" Commander Brent Jett is flying a standard rendezvous profile, approaching the lab complex from behind and below. The terminal phase of the rendezvous procedure will begin a few minutes past 4 a.m. with the shuttle trailing the station by about 9.2 miles. On final approach, at a distance of about 600 feet directly below the station, with Atlantis' nose facing forward and its open payload bay facing the station, Jett will carry out the slow 360-degree rotational pitch maneuver, or RPM, that will point the belly of the shuttle at the station. As the shuttle's underside rotates into view, Expedition 13 commander Pavel Vinogradov and flight engineer Jeff Williams will photograph Atlantis' belly with handheld digital cameras equipped with 400mm and 800mm lenses. The former has a resolution of three inches while the latter has a resolution of one inch. Imagery from the station will be downlinked to Houston for detailed analysis. "The RPM maneuver, or rendezvous pitch maneuver, is actually very visually dramatic," Jett said in a NASA interview. "But from a flying standpoint, it's not really any more difficult than any other type flying we do for rendezvous. The real significance of the RPM is that it allows the station crew to take photos of the underbelly tile areas of the orbiter, which we don't inspect on flight day two. On flight day two, we're looking primarily at leading edge of the wing so this is a whole other area of the thermal protection system, which allows the folks on the ground to analyze for any damage. "If for some reason we can't do the RPM, it's a significant impact to our mission because we still have to, at some point, go under there and look at the tile. The RPM is a very, very efficient way for us to do a little flip maneuver, as we approach the station and allow the station crew members to use an 800mm lens to photograph all the tile and send it down to the ground and let them analyze it. So it's a real important maneuver." After completing the pitch-around, Jett will position Atlantis about 400 feet directly ahead of the space station with the shuttle's nose facing deep space and its cargo bay facing the lab complex. He then will guide the spacecraft to a docking with a pressurized mating adaptor attached to the front of the Destiny laboratory module. After leak checks, Vinogradov, Williams and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter, ferried to the station aboard Discovery in July, will welcome the Atlantis crew aboard the station and provide a safety briefing before all nine astronauts get down to work. "Traditionally, space shuttle crews have kind of taken the day off after docking," pilot Chris Ferguson said in a NASA interview. "It's typically a very long and very busy day. They might do some general transfer operations after docking, but they would kind of pause and take the night off and begin the heavy construction the next day. "What we've elected to do ... is to get right into the payload operations shortly after docking. So about two hours after we're together, hard-mated and the hatches are open, Dan (Burbank) and I are going to extract the payload from the payload bay. Once again, this payload is huge, it occupies the entire payload bay and weighs about 36,000 pounds, so it's no small operation. There are some areas where the clearances get rather tight." Burbank, operating the arm, will have just one inch of clearance between the P3/P4 solar array truss segment and the OBSS heat shield inspection boom mounted along the right wall of the payload bay. As he is lifting the payload straight up from its perch in the cargo bay, Burbank will have to jog it slightly to the left to avoid the OBSS. It is a delicate procedure because of the payload's inertia and the need to avoid any overshoots that could cause it to hit anything. Assuming all goes well, Burbank will position P3/P4 over the left wing of the shuttle. At that point, Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean, operating the space station's more massive arm from inside the Destiny laboratory module, will grapple P3/P4 in a handoff maneuver and Burbank will release the truss with the shuttle's arm. The Canadarm 2 crane will be positioned at work site 7 on the station's P1 truss element, "which is as far as you can go on the space station with the station arm, or Canadarm 2," MacLean said in an interview. "I'm prepositioned so I can accept the handoff. Dan will get it into position and then I'll go in for the handshake when both arms are holding it. Dan will let go and we'll park there over night." MacLean said the handoff will mark a proud moment for Canada, which provided both robot arms and the Space Vision System that will be used Tuesday to precisely position P3/P4 for attachment to the station's truss. "Don't be surprised if you hear a call out on the 'great Canadian handshake,'" MacLean joked at a pre-flight news conference. "But we are handshaking with a payload that is impressive, very high tech, that's going to carry us forward to having the best orbiting laboratory in the world." Pulling P3/P4 from the cargo bay starts a 35-hour timer. That's how long the crew has to get the payload attached to the P1 truss and wired into the electrical system to power critical heaters. But the 13 umbilicals needed to route power and data to and from the new truss element will not be hooked up until Tuesday during a spacewalk by Tanner and Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper. Instead, P3/P4 will be left hanging out over the left wing of the shuttle Monday night, safely attached to the station's robot arm, while the astronauts wind down from a very busy third day in space. Here is an updated timeline of today's activities (in EDT and mission elapsed time):
EDT DD HH MM EVENT __________________________________________________ 04:00 AM 01 16 45 ISS: Verify RPM photo setup ready 04:08 AM 01 16 53 TI rendezvous rocket firing 04:20 AM 01 17 05 ISS in attitude 04:44 AM 01 17 29 Sunset 05:07 AM 01 17 52 Range: 10,000 feet 05:15 AM 01 18 00 Range: 5,000 feet 05:17 AM 01 18 02 Sunrise 05:20 AM 01 18 05 Begin final approach 05:21 AM 01 18 06 Range: 3,000 feet 05:25 AM 01 18 10 MC-4 rendezvous burn 05:29 AM 01 18 14 Range: 1,500 feet 05:31 AM 01 18 16 RPM start window open 05:34 AM 01 18 19 Range: 1,000 feet 05:37 AM 01 18 22 KU antenna to low power 05:38 AM 01 18 23 +R bar arrival directly below ISS 05:43 AM 01 18 28 Range: 600 feet 05:45 AM 01 18 30 Rendezvous pitch maneuver 05:46 AM 01 18 31 Noon 05:53 AM 01 18 38 End pitch maneuver 05:54 AM 01 18 39 RPM full window close 05:56 AM 01 18 41 Start pitch up maneuver to +V bar in front of ISS 06:02 AM 01 18 47 RPM start window close 06:07 AM 01 18 52 +V bar arrival; range: 310 feet in front of ISS 06:08 AM 01 18 53 Range: 300 feet 06:12 AM 01 18 57 Range: 250 feet 06:16 AM 01 19 01 Sunset 06:16 AM 01 19 01 Range: 200 feet 06:19 AM 01 19 04 Range: 170 feet 06:21 AM 01 19 06 Range: 150 feet 06:25 AM 01 19 10 Range: 100 feet 06:28 AM 01 19 13 Range: 75 feet 06:32 AM 01 19 17 Range: 50 feet 06:35 AM 01 19 20 Range: 30 feet; start stationkeeping 06:40 AM 01 19 25 End stationkeeping; push to dock 06:45 AM 01 19 30 Range: 10 feet 06:46 AM 01 19 31 Atlantis docks with space station 06:49 AM 01 19 34 Sunrise 07:05 AM 01 19 50 Hatch leak checks 07:20 AM 01 20 05 Group B computer powerdown 07:35 AM 01 20 20 Orbiter docking system preps for entry 07:55 AM 01 20 40 Hatches opened 08:05 AM 01 20 50 Shuttle robot arm (SRMS) grapples P3/P4 08:20 AM 01 21 05 Welcome aboard! 08:30 AM 01 21 15 Safety briefing 08:55 AM 01 21 40 Station arm (SSRMS> configured 08:55 AM 01 21 40 Post-docking EVA transfer 09:25 AM 01 22 10 SRMS unberths P3/4 10:00 AM 01 22 45 Mission status briefing on NASA TV 10:15 AM 01 23 00 EVA tools configured 10:45 AM 01 23 30 SRMS hands P3/P4 to SSRMS 10:55 AM 01 23 40 SRMS ungrapples P3/4 11:30 AM 02 00 15 EVA camera setup 11:55 AM 02 00 40 EVA-1: Procedures review 02:40 PM 02 03 25 EVA-1: Tanner, Piper campout prebreathe 03:25 PM 02 04 10 EVA-1: 10.2 depress 03:45 PM 02 04 30 ISS crew sleep begins 04:15 PM 02 05 00 STS crew sleep begins 05:00 PM 02 05 45 Daily video highlights reel on NASA TV 06:00 PM 02 06 45 Post-MMT status briefing on NASA TVTanner and Piper will spend the night sealed up in the station's Quest airlock module as part of a new "campout" procedure. The airlock's pressure will be lowered from 14.2 pounds per square inch to 10.2 psi to help the spacewalkers purge nitrogen from their blood and prevent the bends when working in their 5-psi spacesuits. Tuesday morning, after a "hygiene break," Tanner and Piper will begin donning their spacesuits, assisted by Jett. MacLean, meanwhile, will return to the Destiny module, take control of Canadarm 2 and move P3/P4 up to a pre-install position just a few inches from the left end of the station's main truss. Motor-driven bolts will then engage to lock the new P3/P4 truss in place, clearing the way for Tanner and Piper to begin a critical spacewalk to wire it into the station's electrical system, to remove launch restraints and to begin preparations for solar array deployment Thursday.
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