Spaceflight Now




Endeavour approaching station for docking today
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: August 10, 2007

The shuttle Endeavour is closing in on the international space station this morning, on track for a docking around 1:54 p.m. The terminal phase of the rendezvous begins at 11:16 a.m. when commander Scott Kelly and pilot Charles "Scorch" Hobaugh fire the shuttle's maneuvering rockets to begin moving in from a point about 9.2 miles behind the space station.

A few minutes before 1 p.m. - about an hour before docking - the shuttle will move into position some 600 feet directly below the space station. At that point, Kelly will guide the orbiter through a slow 360-degree back flip, exposing the shuttle's belly and critical heat-shield tiles to the crew aboard the station.

Expedition 15 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, flight engineer Oleg Kotov and Clay Anderson will film the maneuver using video and digital still cameras equipped with 400 mm and 800 mm lenses to capture high-resolution images of Endeavour's heat shield.

It will take about 10 minutes to complete the rendezvous pitch maneuver. After that, Kelly plans to guide Endeavour in an arc up to a point about 300 feet directly in front of the space station with the shuttle's nose pointed toward deep space and its open payload bay facing the front end of the lab complex. From there, Kelly will carefully guide Endeavour in to a docking at pressurize mating adapter No. 2 on the front end of the Destiny laboratory module.

"The rendezvous will be pretty much a standard rendezvous as you've seen before," said shuttle flight director Matt Abbott. "We'll approach from behind and below the station. When we come to a point about 600 feet below the station on what we call the R-bar, we'll do the R-bar pitch maneuver, sometimes called the rendezvous pitch maneuver, which is the 360-degree back flip that allows the space station crew Fyodor and Oleg to take photographs of the underside of the vehicle. So we'll get some high resolution photographs of the tiles and all the thermal protection system to be able to analyze that on the ground and make sure it's all in good shape.

"After the RPM is complete, Scott and Scorch will transition the vehicle up to what we call the V-bar, the velocity vector, which is out in front of the direction the space station is traveling. And then Scott will begin a slow and methodical manual approach into docking on PMA-2. There's a little pause at 30 feet, which allows the crew the ability to fly out any angular errors, which we may or may not need to do, and then we go in and dock."

As with the past several station assembly missions, docking is merely one more step in a busy day of work. While part of the crew carries out leak checks and works to open hatches between the two spacecraft, astronaut Tracy Caldwell plans to use the shuttle's robot arm to pull a 5,000-pound solar array truss segment known as S5 from Endeavour's cargo bay.

After hatches are opened and the station crew welcomes their shuttle colleagues aboard, Hobaugh will use the station's robot arm to latch onto S5. He then will move the truss segment to an overnight park position near the right side of the station's solar array truss where it will remain until installation Saturday.

"After docking, we have about two hours of hatch operations, leak checks, configuration of the shuttle to kind of get ready for the docked mission," said station flight director Joel Montalbano. "While we're doing the hatch checks and getting the EVA suits ready and getting everything ready for docked operations, we'll go ahead and grapple the S5. We'll have a short safety briefing, a meet and greet, and then it's down to work pretty quickly.

"We have a rule that we only move one of the robotic arms at a time and so, prior to (Caldwell) moving the S5 out of the payload bay, Scorch will have positioned the station arm to be ready for handoff. Tracy will go ahead and take the payload to Scorch and again, we're using different camera views on board the shuttle assets and station assets on both robotics teams to make sure they have good views. What will happen is Scorch will go ahead and grab the S5 payload. The shuttle arm will back off and we'll stay in that position overnight."

The S5 truss segment will be attached Saturday during a spacewalk by astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Dave Williams. Both astronauts will spend the night in the station's Quest airlock module at a reduced pressure of 10.2 pounds per square inch to help purge their bodies of nitrogen. The low-pressure airlock "camp out" is needed to help prevent the bends after working in NASA's 5-psi spacesuits.

Here is an updated timeline of critical events, based on the crew's rendezvous timeline, revision D of the NASA television schedule and the crew's flight plan (in EDT and mission elapsed time; NOTE: NASA rounds down to the nearest minute while this page rounds up or down as required):


EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT

08/10/07

07:37 AM...01...13...00...STS/ISS crew wakeup
08:30 AM...01...13...54...NASA video file on NTV
08:42 AM...01...14...05...Group B computer powerup
08:57 AM...01...14...20...Begin rendezvous timeline
09:45 AM...01...15...08...NC-4 rendezvous rocket firing
10:47 AM...01...16...10...Spacehab prepped for docking
11:16 AM...01...16...39...TI rendezvous burn; Range: 9.2 miles
11:27 AM...01...16...50...Spacesuit removal
11:52 AM...01...17...15...Sunset
12:00 PM...01...17...23...U.S. solar arrays feathered
12:14 PM...01...17...37...Range: 10,000 feet
12:23 PM...01...17...46...Range: 5,000 feet
12:24 PM...01...17...47...Sunrise
12:29 PM...01...17...52...Range: 3,000 feet
12:33 PM...01...17...56...MC-4 rendezvous rocket firing
12:37 PM...01...18...00...Approach timeline begins
12:37 PM...01...18...00...Range: 1,500 feet
12:38 PM...01...18...01...Rendezvous pitch maneuver (RPM) start window open
12:42 PM...01...18...05...Range: 1,000 feet
12:45 PM...01...18...08...KU antenna to low power
12:46 PM...01...18...09...Shuttle directly below ISS
12:51 PM...01...18...14...Range: 600 feet
12:53 PM...01...18...16...Start rendezvous pitch maneuver
12:54 PM...01...18...17...Noon
01:01 PM...01...18...24...End rendezvous pitch maneuver
01:01 PM...01...18...24...RPM full photo window close
01:03 PM...01...18...26...Initiate pitch up maneuver
01:09 PM...01...18...32...RPM start window close
01:15 PM...01...18...38...Shuttle directly in front of station; range: 310 feet
01:16 PM...01...18...39...Range: 300 feet
01:20 PM...01...18...43...Range: 250 feet
01:23 PM...01...18...46...Sunset
01:24 PM...01...18...47...Range: 200 feet
01:27 PM...01...18...50...Range: 170 feet
01:28 PM...01...18...51...Range: 150 feet
01:32 PM...01...18...55...Range: 100 feet
01:35 PM...01...18...58...Range: 75 feet
01:40 PM...01...19...03...Range: 50 feet
01:43 PM...01...19...06...Range: 30 feet; start station keeping
01:48 PM...01...19...11...End station keeping; push to dock
01:52 PM...01...19...15...Range: 10 feet

01:54 PM...01...19...17...DOCKING

01:56 PM...01...19...19...Sunrise
02:17 PM...01...19...40...Leak checks
02:17 PM...01...19...40...Post-rendezvous laptop reconfig
02:47 PM...01...20...10...Airlock prepped for ingress
02:57 PM...01...20...20...Group B computer powerdown
03:17 PM...01...20...40...Shuttle arm (SRMS) grapples S5
03:22 PM...01...20...45...Hatch opening
03:32 PM...01...20...55...Spacehab post-docking reconfig
03:32 PM...01...20...55...SRMS unberths S5
04:02 PM...01...21...25...Welcome aboard!
04:07 PM...01...21...30...Safety briefing
04:32 PM...01...21...55...Station arm (SSRMS) moves to pre-grapple position
04:52 PM...01...22...15...SRMS maneuvers
05:22 PM...01...22...45...SSRMS grapples S5
05:30 PM...01...22...54...Mission status briefing on NASA TV
05:37 PM...01...23...00...SRMS ungrapples S5
05:37 PM...01...23...00...Equipment lock prep
06:07 PM...01...23...30...REBA checkout
06:22 PM...01...23...45...EVA tools transferred to ISS
06:37 PM...02...00...00...Station-to-shuttle power transfer system activated
06:42 PM...02...00...05...EVA-1: Tools prepped
07:22 PM...02...00...45...EVA-1: Procedures review
10:02 PM...02...03...25...EVA-1: Mask pre-breathe
10:47 PM...02...04...10...EVA-1: Airlock depress to 10.2 psi
11:07 PM...02...04...30...ISS crew sleep begins
11:37 PM...02...05...00...STS crew sleep begin
08:07 AM...02...13...30...STS/ISS crew wakeup

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VIDEO: ANIMATED PREVIEW OF DOCKING PLAY
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VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: COMPLEX 41 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: KSC RUNWAY PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PAD FRONT PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA CS-1 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA CS-2 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA UCS-12 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PRESS SITE PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: VAB ROOF PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: BEACH TRACKER PLAY

VIDEO: ENDEAVOUR BLASTS OFF! PLAY
VIDEO: CREW'S LAUNCH MORNING PHOTO IN DINING ROOM PLAY
VIDEO: UPCLOSE FOOTAGE OF THE GANTRY ROLLBACK PLAY
VIDEO: TIME-LAPSE MOVIE OF GANTRY ROLLBACK PLAY
VIDEO: TUESDAY MORNING'S STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
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VIDEO: COMMENTS FROM EACH OF THE ASTRONAUTS PLAY

VIDEO: PRE-FLIGHT INTERVIEW: SCOTT KELLY PLAY
VIDEO: PRE-FLIGHT INTERVIEW: CHARLIE HOBAUGH PLAY
VIDEO: PRE-FLIGHT INTERVIEW: TRACY CALDWELL PLAY
VIDEO: PRE-FLIGHT INTERVIEW: RICK MASTRACCHIO PLAY
VIDEO: PRE-FLIGHT INTERVIEW: DAVE WILLIAMS PLAY
VIDEO: PRE-FLIGHT INTERVIEW: BARBARA MORGAN PLAY
VIDEO: PRE-FLIGHT INTERVIEW: ALVIN DREW PLAY
MORE: STS-118 VIDEO COVERAGE
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