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Astronauts set to open newly attached Japanese module BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: March 14, 2008 Taking a break between spacewalks, the shuttle/station astronauts plan to open up the newly installed Japanese logistics module early Saturday for activation and checkout. They also plan to use the station's robot arm this evening to lock onto a $209 million Canadian maintenance robot under construction on the station to provide keep-alive power, bypassing suspect circuitry on its assembly pallet that was not set up properly before launch. NASA's Mission Management Team, meanwhile, wrapped up its post-launch assessment of Endeavour's heat shield, or thermal protection system, and formally cleared the ship for a normal end-of-mission re-entry. "Essentially, they were able to clear all the areas of interest on the TPS," said MMT Chairman LeRoy Cain. "So today in the mission management team, we went ahead and cleared the TPS for deorbit and entry. So the vehicle is safe to come home whenever we get ready to do so. ... Overall, the orbiter's performing very, very well. We don't have any new problems we're working." Engineers are, however, keeping close tabs on a slow pressure decay in the fuel system of auxillary power unit No. 1, one of three machines that provide hydraulic power for the shuttle during launch and re-entry. The pressure loss noted in APU 1 could be the result of a harmless nitrogen pressurization system leak or a more troublesome hydrazine fuel leak. Either way, the problem is not expected to have any impact on Endeavour's mission. The astronauts were awakened to begin their fifth flight day at 4:35 p.m. by a recording of "Turn, Turn, Turn" radioed up from mission control. "And good morning, particularly to you, Rick," called astronaut Al Drew from the Johnson Space Center called for Endeavour spacewalker Richard Linnehan. "Houston, Endeavour, this is Dom," commander Dominic Gorie replied. "Good morning. Rick heard that, he's getting to sleep over in the Columbus (module) this morning, enjoying that after a spacewalk. Looking forward to a great day, the pace is going to drop back a little bit for us this morning after that first EVA. We're looking forward to getting in the JLP with (Japanese astronaut) Takao (Doi)." The Japanese module, the first of two making up the station's largest research section, was moved from Endeavour's cargo bay to an upward-facing port on the forward Harmony module early today. After the much larger Kibo experiment module is launched and attached to Harmony's left side port in late May, the logistics module will be moved to a port on the outboard end of the Japanese lab module. "The reason why we are going to do this is that (larger lab module) is too heavy to carry all the system racks inside," Doi said in a NASA interview. "So first, we carry half of the system racks inside this logistics module. When the (larger module) arrives, we transfer this half of the system racks so that we can activate the systems in the (experiment) module safely." But for the next two months or so, the logistics module will be mounted atop Harmony, also known as Node 2, and the astronauts plan to float inside early Saturday to begin initial activation and checkout. "As soon as the crew wakes up, they're going to start configuring the vestibule area (between the logistics module and Harmony)," said flight director Ginger Kerrick. "Some of the things they need to do are to remove all the hardware that is just there to help establish the connection for mating the JLP to Node 2. So they'll take all of that hardware out of the way. And then they'll also make some connections to establish airflow between JLP and Node 2 as well as provide some temporary data and power connections. The JLP is not intended to stay on the node 2 overhead port, it's just a temporary setup." This evening, astronaut Robert Behnken, operating the space station's robot arm from a work station inside the Destiny laboratory module, plans to pull the shuttle's heat shield inspection boom from its perch on the right side of the ship's payload bay and hand it off to the shuttle's arm, operated by commander Dom Gorie and pilot Gregory Johnson. The boom will be used later in the mission to carry out a final inspection before being stowed on the front of the lab's solar power truss during a fifth and final spacewalk. The boom is being left on the station for the next shuttle crew, which cannot carry their own boom because of clearance issues with the large Kibo module. After handing off the orbiter boom sensor system to the shuttle arm tonight, Behnken plans to lock the station arm onto the Canadian Space Agency's special purpose dextrous manipulator, or SPDM, also known as Dextre, around 9:53 p.m. The goal is to bypass the assembly pallet's suspect 1553 data bus and provide keep-alive power to critical heaters. Engineers ran into trouble earlier in the week when they were unable to route keep-alive power to the robot's components. They initially believed the problem was a software timing issue and programmers quickly wrote a patch to change the parameters. Studying the issue in more detail Thursday, engineers concluded the problem actually was with the 1553 bus built into Dextre's Spacelab construction pallet. The problem is similar to what happens when a personal computer hard drive is not properly "terminated." The drive might be fully functional, but data will not flow properly. In this case, the 1553 bus should have included circuit termination but for reasons not yet understood, it does not. By connecting the station arm directly to a different grapple fixture on the robot's torso, engineers can bypass the bus and supply power directly. "The software patch did not work but to be perfectly honest, we were not surprised by that," Kerrick said earlier today. "Teams continued to look at the data and their latest theory is that it's not a problem with the SPDM at all, it's a problem with the pallet on which it sits, specifically a cabling issue that doesn't allow data to flow appropriately. We fully expect if we apply power from the (station arm) that we will be able to power up SPDM and have connectivity with it. That is what we are planning to do later this evening. "First, the station arm has to hand off the OBSS to the shuttle arm and as soon as that is complete and the station arm is free, the crew will maneuver the station arm over to the SPDM and grapple it. When grapple is complete, the ground team will retry a power up of the SPDM and we fully expect that to work." The station arm does not have to stay attached around the clock. Periodic power ups will suffice until Dextre is fully assembled and mounted directly to a power and data grapple fixture on the Destiny lab module. "So we will test it out, we will leave it there in an overnight config and then on (Saturday), we will release it and free up the arm to support (spacewalk) activities," Kerrick said. "At the end of EVA-2, we'll re-grapple it for thermal reasons so we can keep some of the components within their temperature limits overnight. EVA-3, we may have some deltas to, but the teams are just starting to look at that." Here is an updated timeline of today's activity (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision C of the NASA television schedule): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 03/14/08 05:00 PM...03...14...32...Post-MMT briefing on NASA TV 06:08 PM...03...15...40...ISS daily planning conference 06:53 PM...03...16...25...Japanese logistics module (JLP) vestibule outfitting 07:03 PM...03...16...35...Station arm (SSRMS) grapples OBSS (Behnken) 07:33 PM...03...17...05...SSMRS unberths OBSS 07:48 PM...03...17...20...SSMRS hands OBSS off to shuttle arm (SRMS) 08:33 PM...03...18...05...SRMS grapples OBSS (Gorie/Johnson) 08:48 PM...03...18...20...JLP vestibule outfitting (part 2) 08:53 PM...03...18...25...SSRMS releases OBSS 09:38 PM...03...19...10...Logistics transfers 09:53 PM...03...19...25...SSRMS grapples Dextre robot; provides power/data 10:00 PM...03...19...32...Mission status briefing on NASA TV 10:53 PM...03...20...25...Crew meals begin 11:53 PM...03...21...25...EVA-2: Tool config 03/15/08 12:18 AM...03...21...50...JLP ingress 12:38 AM...03...22...10...Spacesuit swap 01:08 AM...03...22...40...JLP inspection 01:23 AM...03...22...55...Negative pressure relief valve checkout 01:28 AM...03...23...00...PAO event 01:53 AM...03...23...25...Airlock preps 03:58 AM...04...01...30...EVA-2: Procedures review 05:43 AM...04...03...15...EVA-2: Mask pre-breathe and tool config 06:38 AM...04...04...10...EVA-2: Airlock depress to 10.2 psi 06:58 AM...04...04...30...ISS crew sleep begins 07:28 AM...04...05...00...STS crew sleep begins 08:00 AM...04...05...32...Daily video highlights reel on NASA TV 01:00 PM...04...10...32...Flight director update on NASA TV 03:28 PM...04...13...00...Crew wakeup
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VIDEO:
THURSDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING 