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Testing of station's Dextre robot on tap this evening BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: March 16, 2008 The Endeavour astronauts, well ahead of schedule in their space station assembly mission, face a busy day of work stowing equipment needed for the next shuttle mission and testing a Canadian maintenance robot nearing completion after two spacewalks. The astronauts were awakened at 3:43 p.m. by a recording of Caedmon Call's "God of Wonders" radioed from mission control for shuttle commander Dominic Gorie. "Good morning Endeavour," astronaut Al Drew called from Houston. "Good morning to you, Dom. You guys worked so hard yesterday we gave you an extra 17 minutes of sleeping in. How 'bout that?" "Good morning, Al. That timing was perfect," Gorie replied. "Right before the music came on, the sun hit the space station, it was just beautiful. So very, very appropriate song, thank you for waking us up with that. The glory is apparent this morning." Astronauts Richard Linnehan and Michael Foreman attached two 275-pound, 11-foot-long arms to the special purpose dexterous manipulator robot, known informally as Dextre, during a spacewalk overnight Saturday and flight controllers spent the morning making sure the robot's circuitry was healthy. "The ground checkouts of Dextre went great," said Flight Director Ginger Kerrick. "During the EVA, we made the physical and electrical connections for the arms and so (this morning), we sent some diagnostic commands just to test out, make sure all the connectors were configured in the fashion we expected them to be. And all those tests were great, so we are ready and set up for the crew's part of the checkout today." Working from a robotics work station in the Destiny laboratory module, Robert Behnken and Garrett Reisman will send commands to move Dextre's joints slightly to make sure internal brakes are working properly. "The crew will be sending some commands to test out each of the individual joints, specifically the brakes on the joints," Kerrick said. "We don't want to command any significant motions with any of the joints until we make sure that those brakes work first. Everything is looking great so far." Kerrick said the crew is well ahead of the mission timeline and that the shuttle astronauts will work today to help the station crew stow some of the equipment that was ferried up inside a new Japanese logistics module. That equipment will be needed for the next shuttle mission in late May when Japan's huge Kibo laboratory module is attached to the fast-growing station. "They finished all their rack reconfigurations yesterday," Kerrick said. "So we moved a whole bunch of activities up into today's timeline. There are things like configuring hatches to the on-orbit configuration, and we also were able to move up some additional stowage-related activities. We brought up a significant amount of hardware in the JLP (Japanese logistics module) and all that hardware is needed for execution of the 1J, or STS-124, mission (in May). "So what we're having the crew do is gather all the hardware into specific kits that are tied to specific activities and that way, that'll help the activities go a little bit more efficiently, the crew can grab this kit and go off and run that activity on the next shuttle mission. Normally during a shuttle mission, we transfer a lot of cargo and we don't have time to put it away. But because the crew is getting so far ahead, we have scheduled some time for them to stow all the hardware. ... We are getting significantly ahead and the crew is doing a great job." The astronauts also will participate in news media interviews this evening, starting at 10:18 p.m., and review procedures for a third spacewalk that will begin Monday evening. Linnehan and Behnken will spend the night in the station's Quest airlock module to help purge nitrogen from their bloodstreams in preparation for the spacewalk. Here is an updated timeline of today's activity (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision F of the NASA television schedule): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 03:28 PM...05...13...00...Crew wakeup 05:18 PM...05...14...50...ISS daily planning conference 05:43 PM...05...15...15...Brake run in arm 1 06:43 PM...05...16...15...Brake run in arm 2 07:33 PM...05...17...05...Japanese module (JLP) outfitting 08:00 PM...05...17...32...Mission status briefing on NASA TV 08:48 PM...05...18...20...Spacesuit swap 09:18 PM...05...18...50...Joint crew meal 10:18 PM...05...19...50...Crew interviews 10:38 PM...05...20...10...JLP stow preps 10:58 PM...05...20...30...EVA-3: Tool config 11:48 PM...05...21...20...EVA-3: Dextre arm stow 03/17/08 12:33 AM...05...22...05...Airlock preps 02:58 AM...06...00...30...EVA-3: Procedures review 04:43 AM...06...02...15...EVA-3: Mask pre-breathe/tool config 05:38 AM...06...03...10...EVA-3: Airlock depress to 10.2 psi 05:58 AM...06...03...30...ISS crew sleep begins 06:28 AM...06...04...00...STS crew sleep begins 07:00 AM...06...04...32...Daily video highlights reel on NASA TV 11:35 AM...06...09...07...French ambassador visits mission control (on NASA TV) 12:00 PM...06...09...32...Flight director update on NASA TV 02:28 PM...06...12...00...Crew wakeup
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