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Discovery arrives at station to install major module BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: June 2, 2008 The shuttle Discovery glided to a gentle docking with the international space station today, wrapping up a two-day orbital rendezvous after pausing directly below the lab complex for a slow-motion back flip that gave the lab crew a chance to photograph the orbiter's heat shield. Approaching from directly ahead at a sedate relative velocity of a tenth of a foot per second, Discovery's docking system engaged its counterpart on the front of the space station at 2:03 p.m. as the two spacecraft sailed out of Earth's shadow and into sunlight 209 miles above the South Pacific Ocean. "Houston and station, capture confirmed," one of the shuttle astronauts radioed. "Discovery, arriving," outgoing station flight engineer Garrett Reisman said, ringing the ship's bell in the Destiny lab module. After leak checks to make sure the docking system is firmly engaged, the astronauts will open hatches between Discovery and pressurized mating adapter No. 2 on the front of the Harmony module. After a brief welcome aboard ceremony and a mandatory safety briefing to get the shuttle crew up to speed on critical station systems, the astronauts will get to work transferring equipment and gearing up for a spacewalk Tuesday. Along with delivering Japan's huge Kibo laboratory module and spare parts for the station's Russian toilet, Discovery also brought Reisman's replacement - astronaut Gregory Chamitoff, who will remain behind aboard the lab complex with expedition 17 commander Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko when the shuttle departs June 11. "You're got a beautiful house," Chamitoff radioed Reisman after docking. One of the first items on the agenda today is to transfer a custom Soyuz seat liner from Discovery to the Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft that serves as the station crew's lifeboat. Once the seat liner is in place, Chamitoff will officially join the Expedition 17 crew, replacing Reisman. Today's rendezvous was carried out with deliberate precision and Kelly had no problems piloting Discovery through a 360-degree rotational pitch maneuver to expose the shuttle's belly to the station crew's cameras. The station crew used 400- and 800-millimeter telephoto lenses, snapping dozens of digital photos of Discovery's heat shield tile in a now-standard post-Columbia inspection to looks for signs of launch damage from external tank foam insulation or other debris. Within minutes, the pictures were downlinked to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for a detailed analysis to help engineers determine the health of the shuttle's thermal protection system. "Houston and Discovery on the big loop. We have some good RPM photos and they are being downlinked right now," Reisman radioed. "Please tell (shuttle pilot) Ken Ham he has some ketchup on his shirt." While image analysts begin examining the RPM photos, the astronauts will be gearing up for a spacewalk Tuesday, the first of three planned for Discovery's mission. The primary goals of the first excursion are to retrieve a heat shield inspection boom left on the station in March and to prepare the Kibo module for attachment to Harmony's left-side port. Spacewalkers Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan plan to spend the night in the station's Quest airlock module at a reduced air pressure of 10.2 pounds per square inch to help purge nitrogen from their bloodstreams. The campout procedure helps prevent the bends after working in NASA's 5-psi spacesuits. Along with delivering Chamitoff, Kibo and other supplies and equipment, Discovery also brought a spare pump and other parts for the Russian toilet in the Zvezda command module. The urine collection system in the toilet malfunctioned recently and the station crew is hopeful the new pump will fix the problem. Kononenko plans to begin the repair work Wednesday.
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