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Astronauts prepare for heat shield inspection BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: October 24, 2007 The Discovery astronauts are working through a busy day in space today, setting up a critical heat shield inspection and preparing the shuttle for docking Thursday with the international space station. Commander Pam Melroy, pilot George Zamka, flight engineer Stephanie Wilson, Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli, spacewalkers Scott Parazynski, Doug Wheelock and new space station crew member Dan Tani were awakened at 1:39 a.m. for their first full day in orbit. Today's wakeup music beamed up from mission control was a recording of "Lord of the Dance" performed by John Langstaff. "Good morning Discovery, and a special good morning to you today, Pam," astronaut Shannon Lucid radioed. "Welcome to your first full space day." "Thanks, Shannon," replied Melroy, who lists jazz and tap dancing among her hobbies. "That was one of my favorite songs. Thanks to my husband Doug. I love you." "And we all really enjoyed the music, too, Pam." The major item on the crew's agenda today is a detailed inspection of Discovery's reinforced carbon carbon nose cap and RCC wing leading edge panels using a laser scanner and a high-resolution camera. The scanner and camera, mounted on the end of a 50 foot boom known as the orbiter boom sensor system, or OBSS, will be moved along the front of both wings and the nose cap by Discovery's robot arm to look for any signs of launch-related impact damage. The inspection was scheduled to begin around 6 a.m. In a slight change in procedure from past flights, one of the multiple passes along the wing leading edge panels will be carried out at a slower speed than usual to improve the view of any abnormalities in a protective coating. Three of the 44 wing leading edge panels on Discovery - RCC panels 9 right, 13 right and 12 left - have known areas of coating degradation and engineers want to make sure those areas do not get worse. "We are slowing down just one of the scans, one pass on each one of the wings, just to give us an opportunity to get a little bit better, higher-fidelity imagery with our laser scans," said LeRoy Cain, launch integration manager at the Kennedy Space Center. Before launch, an independent NASA engineering group recommended delaying Discovery's flight to replace the panels after concluding the root cause of the degradation was not as well understood as previously believed. Without a known root cause, they argued, it is not possible to make accurate predictions about how such degradation might evolve over time. NASA managers, however, cleared Discovery for launch as is based on past experience with the panels - the degradation has been fairly stable over two previous missions - and because any major change for the worse would be spotted by the crew during their normal heat shield inspections and if necessary, repairs could be made. But in a bid to gather more details about the issue and how the degradation changes over time, a slower scan of the areas in question will be carried out today. "Our big ticket item for flight day two is scanning the wing leading edges and the nose cap," shuttle flight director Rick LaBrode said at a pre-launch briefing. "They start with the starboard wing, and you can see it looks like they do it multiple times and really, they do because they're coming at it from different angles. They come from the bottom for the first pass and then they go around to the top. They do the nose cap and move over to the port wing. "Some of the other significant activities we do on flight day two are getting ready for the rendezvous the next day. We install the centerline camera, we deploy the orbiter docking system ring, check out the (rendezvous) tools, the handheld laser and those. And the crew also will be doing (spacesuit) checkout for the two suits that Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock will be using for the first EVA. They'll do a quick checkout and get those ready for transfer as soon as we get docked." A mission status briefing is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. A second briefing, following today's Mission Management Team meeting, is planned for 6 p.m. Here is an updated timeline of today's activities (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision A of the NASA TV schedule): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 10/24/07 01:38 AM...00...14...00...Crew wakeup 04:38 AM...00...17...00...Ergometer setup 04:53 AM...00...17...15...NC-2 rendezvous rocket firing 04:53 AM...00...17...15...OBSS unberth 05:53 AM...00...18...15...OBSS starboard wing survey 07:38 AM...00...20...00...Spacesuit checkout preps 07:38 AM...00...20...00...SAFER emergency jetpack checkout 07:48 AM...00...20...10...OBSS nose cap survey 08:08 AM...00...20...30...Crew meals begin 09:08 AM...00...21...30...Spacesuit checkout 09:48 AM...00...22...10...OBSS port wing survey 10:23 AM...00...22...45...Spacesuit transfer preps 11:30 AM...00...23...52...Mission status briefing on NTV 11:48 AM...01...00...10...OBSS berthing 11:58 AM...01...00...20...Laser scanner downlink 12:23 PM...01...00...45...Centerline camera installation 12:53 PM...01...01...15...Orbiter docking system ring extension 01:23 PM...01...01...45...OMS rocket pod survey 01:58 PM...01...02...20...Rendezvous tools checkout 03:29 PM...01...03...51...NC-3 rendezvous rocket firing 05:38 PM...01...06...00...Crew sleep begins 06:00 PM...01...06...22...Post-MMT briefing on NTV 07:00 PM...01...07...22...Daily video highlights reel on NTV
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VIDEO:
SHUTTLE DISCOVERY BLASTS OFF 