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It's rendezvous day for Discovery and space station BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: March 17, 2009 The space shuttle Discovery is closing in on the international space station today, on track for a docking around 5:13 p.m. Commander Lee Archambault and his six crewmates - pilot Dominic "Tony" Antonelli, John Phillips, incoming space station flight engineer Koichi Wakata and spacewalkers Steve Swanson, Richard Arnold and Joseph Acaba - plan to kick off final rendezvous operations shortly after wakeup at 9:43 a.m. "We get in our rendezvous timeline real quickly after we wake up," Archambault said in a NASA interview. "About 90 minutes after the crew wakes up, the core rendezvous team - myself, Tony Antonelli and John Phillips - will jump into the rendezvous timeline. The rendezvous timeline starts about five-and-a-half hours, approximately, before the actual docking. "For the first three hours, Tony, myself assisted by John, will conduct a series of burns to position ourselves in close proximity with the (station). At the end of those three hours, we'll conclude that with what's called a TI (terminal initiation) burn. With the successful completion of that TI burn, for all intents and purposes the orbiter will be on sort of a collision course with the space station." The TI rocket firing, scheduled for 2:34 p.m., will occur with the shuttle trailing the space station by about 9.2 miles. From there, Discovery will approach from behind and below. "Once we finish the TI burn, we play musical chairs with where we're at in the cockpit," Archambault said. "I will transition from the commander's seat to the aft flight deck where we have the controls and also can look out through the overhead window. Tony will jump over from his seat to mine and that's where we bring Joe Acaba into the pilot seat. Joe will assist Tony executing the checklist procedures. "For about the next hour and 15 minutes, Tony assisted by Joe will perform a series of very small correction burns to poise ourselves, at the end of that fourth correction burn, to place our orbiter within approximately two thousand feet, coming up the station from slightly behind and slightly below. At that point I'll begin manually flying the orbiter. "I'll initially fly it to a point directly below the station at about 600 feet and that's when we (perform) the RPM, or the rendezvous pitch maneuver." In what is a now-standard post-Columbia feature of shuttle-station dockings, the orbiter will perform a slow computer-driven 360-degree back flip directly under the space station to let the lab crew photograph the orbiter's heat shield tiles with 400-mm and 800-mm telephoto lenses. The digital images will be downlinked to mission control in Houston for a detailed assessment to make sure there are no problems that might affect a safe re-entry at the end of the mission. "I think these are some of the most spectacular pictures I've seen in the entire history of the shuttle program, the pictures we get durning the RPM, to see the Earth rotating underneath the orbiter as the orbiter basically does a loop in one spot," said lead flight director Paul Dye. With the pitch maneuver complete, "I'll again take manual control of the vehicle and I'll fly what's called a TORVA, where I transition the vehicle from that point 600 feet below the station to a point about 300 feet out in front of the station (on the velocity vector)," Archambault said. "From there, essentially I'll just back it right on in and rendezvous with the space station." During final approach, the shuttle will be oriented with its nose facing deep space, it's tail pointed at Earth and its open cargo bay facing the station. "Ultimately, when we dock with the station we're moving at a snail's pace of like one to two inches per second," Archambault said. "We have four guys working actively on this part of the process. Once we do dock or make contact with the station, Swannie and Ricky will take over operating the APDS, or the docking system, to perform all the hook closures and make sure we have a good tight seal with the space station. "And while all that's going on, we've got Koichi running all the photo and TV gear and capturing all the video that you're going to see here down on the ground. So it's a complete team effort. There's no one just sitting around on this one." Here is an updated timeline of today's activity (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision B of the NASA television schedule and the rendezvous timeline): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 03/17/09 01:43 AM...01...06...00...Crew sleep begins 08:53 AM...01...13...10...ISS crew wakeup 09:43 AM...01...14...00...STS crew wakeup (begin flight day 3) 09:58 AM...01...14...15...ISS daily planning conference 11:23 AM...01...15...40...Group B computer powerup 11:38 AM...01...15...55...Rendezvous timeline begins 01:02 PM...01...17...19...NC-4 rendezvous rocket firing 01:48 PM...01...18...05...Spacesuits removed from airlock 02:34 PM...01...18...51...TI burn 03:10 PM...01...19...27...Sunset 03:33 PM...01...19...50...Range: 10,000 feet 03:42 PM...01...19...59...Range: 5,000 feet 03:43 PM...01...20...00...Sunrise 03:47 PM...01...20...04...Range: 3,000 feet 03:50 PM...01...20...07...MC-4 rendezvous burn 03:54 PM...01...20...11...Range: 1,500 feet 03:57 PM...01...20...14...RPM start window open 03:59 PM...01...20...16...Range: 1,000 feet 04:02 PM...01...20...19...KU antenna to low power 04:03 PM...01...20...20...+R bar arrival directly below ISS 04:09 PM...01...20...26...Range: 600 feet 04:10 PM...01...20...27...Start pitch maneuver 04:13 PM...01...20...30...Noon 04:18 PM...01...20...35...End pitch maneuver 04:20 PM...01...20...37...RPM full photo window close 04:21 PM...01...20...38...Initiate pitch up maneuver (575 ft) 04:29 PM...01...20...46...RPM start window close 04:33 PM...01...20...50...+V bar arrival; range: 310 feet 04:33 PM...01...20...50...Range: 300 feet 04:38 PM...01...20...55...Range: 250 feet 04:42 PM...01...20...59...Range: 200 feet 04:52 PM...01...20...69...Sunset 04:44 PM...01...21...01...Range: 170 feet 04:46 PM...01...21...03...Range: 150 feet 04:50 PM...01...21...07...Range: 100 feet 04:53 PM...01...21...10...Range: 75 feet 04:57 PM...01...21...14...Range: 50 feet 05:01 PM...01...21...18...Range: 30 feet; start stationkeeping 05:06 PM...01...21...23...End stationkeeping; push to dock 05:10 PM...01...21...27...Range: 10 feet 05:12 PM...01...21...29...DOCKING 05:15 PM...01...21...32...Sunrise 05:38 PM...01...21...55...Leak checks 06:08 PM...01...22...25...Orbiter docking system prepped for ingress 06:08 PM...01...22...25...Group B computer powerdown 06:23 PM...01...22...40...Post docking laptop reconfig 06:28 PM...01...22...45...Hatch open 06:58 PM...01...23...15...Welcome aboard! 07:03 PM...01...23...20...Safety briefing 07:15 PM...01...23...32...Mission status/post-MMT briefing 07:28 PM...01...23...45...Soyuz seatliner transfer/installation 08:23 PM...02...00...40...Spacesuits transferred to ISS 08:38 PM...02...00...55...Playback ops 08:48 PM...02...01...05...REBA checkout 09:28 PM...02...01...45...Crew HDTV downlink test 09:58 PM...02...02...15...ISS evening planning conference 03/18/09 12:13 AM...02...04...30...ISS crew sleep begins 12:43 AM...02...05...00...STS crew sleep begins Discovery will dock at the station's forward port, a pressurized mating adapter on the front end of the Harmony connecting module. After verifying tight seals, hatches will be opened and space station commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yury Lonchakov and Sandra Magnus will welcome the Discovery astronauts aboard. Fincke will give Archambault and his crewmates a safety briefing before the combined crews get to work. The main items on the post-docking agenda are to transfer spacesuits from Discovery to the station, along with a custom seatliner that will enable Wakata to use the station's Soyuz lifeboat in an emergency. At that point, Wakata will become an official member of the ISS-18 crew and Magnus will take his place aboard Discovery as she prepares to close out a four-and-a-half month stay in space. Fincke and Lonchakov will be replaced later this month by Expedition 19 commander Gennady Padalka and Michael Barratt, who plan to launch March 26 aboard the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft. Fincke and Lonchakov will return to Earth April 7 aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 craft that carried them into orbit last October. A briefing is scheduled for 7:15 p.m. to review the day's activities and to provide an update from the Mission Management Team.
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VIDEO:
MONDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING 