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STS-119: The programs

In advance of shuttle Discovery's STS-119 mission to the station, managers from both programs discuss the flight.

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STS-119: The mission

A detailed preview of Discovery's mission to deliver and activate the space station's final power truss is provided in this briefing.

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STS-119: Spacewalks

Four spacewalks are planned during Discovery's STS-119 mission to the station.

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STS-119: The Crew

The Discovery astronauts, led by commander Lee Archambault, meet the press in the traditional pre-flight news conference.

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Problem forces station crew to delay urine test
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: March 22, 2009

A critical test run using the space station's presumably repaired urine processor system was called off today when the lab crew ran into problems loading the system with stored urine. After several hours of troubleshooting, mission control told station commander Mike Fincke to close the water recovery system rack and call it a day.

"The troubleshooting steps we just did to try to resolve this problem with the UPA (urine processing assembly) were no joy," Rick Davis called from mission control shortly before 2 p.m. "We are going to stand down from UPA activities for today so that we can get everyone looking at it to come up with some additional ideas."

FIncke passed along the crew's apologies, saying "sorry about that." He indicated the flow problem prevented him from getting enough urine into the system to test the newly installed distillation assembly - DA - centrifuge, the component that broke down shortly after installation last year, delaying UPA tests and checkout. A replacement was carried up aboard the shuttle Discovery and installed Friday.

"I guess we didn't have enough in the (tank) to try out the DA part," Fincke said. "So we'll plan on shutting the doors and reconfiguring all the racks for further use. Thanks for the heads up. Sorry about that, guys. Yeah, I saw that too, once you closed valve 3 it didn't seem to flow. I have no idea why that could be. So good luck with the troubleshooting and we're standing by to answer any questions or be of any use."

Fincke spent most of the morning helping engineers at the Johnson Space Center troubleshoot the flow rate problem. He had hoped to load the system with stored urine and to carry out a five-hour processing run to test the system's performance.

"He had begun configuring the urine processor assembly for a wet run with that distillation assembly this afternoon," said NASA's mission control commentator, Nicole Cloutier-Lemaster. "He had been making those configurations throughout the morning and working with the ground team, noticed that they had a slower-than-expected flow rate in those tanks.

"The ground team has been working with (Fincke) on some different steps to try to identify the cause of the lower-than-expected flow rates and have initiated a couple of commands from the ground, as well as some steps from on board involving the hoses and the quick disconnects."

But so far, the cause of the problem has not been islolated.

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