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STS-124 day 1 highlights

The highlights from shuttle Discovery's launch day are packaged into this movie.

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Discovery rolls out

Discovery travels from the Vehicle Assembly Building to pad 39A in preparation for the STS-124 mission.

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STS-124: The programs

In advance of shuttle Discovery's STS-124 mission to the station, managers from both programs discuss the flight.

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STS-124: The mission

A detailed preview of Discovery's mission to deliver Japan's science laboratory Kibo to the station is provided in this briefing.

 Part 1 | Part 2

STS-124: Spacewalks

Three spacewalks are planned during Discovery's STS-124 assembly mission to the station.

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STS-124: The Crew

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

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First spacewalk of Discovery's mission on tap today
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: June 3, 2008

Astronauts Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan are gearing up for a six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk today to retrieve a shuttle heat shield inspection boom mounted on the international space station; prepare the huge Japanese Kibo lab module for installation; and attempt to clean contamination from a critical solar array rotary joint.

"Obviously, it's going to be a really big day for Japan," said space station Flight Director Emily Nelson. "They've been working very hard on this module and all of the systems in it. It's a big day for us as well, bringing the largest laboratory that we'll have on the space station on orbit and getting it up and running, getting our Japanese partner up and running in a full 24-hour capacity, actively running science out of their module."

Discovery docked with the space station Monday after a flawless rendezvous. Opening a final hatch between the shuttle and the lab complex, Discovery commander Mark Kelly called out, "Hey, are you looking for a plumber?" Work to repair the station's balky Russian toilet is planned for Wednesday.

The Discovery astronauts were awakened today at 6:32 a.m. by a recording of "Hold Me With The Robot Arm" beamed up from mission control for Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. The song was performed by high school friends of Hoshide's and it was an appropriate selection given today's agenda: if all goes well, Hoshide and Karen Nyberg, operating the station's robot arm, will pull 15-ton Kibo from the shuttle's cargo bay around 4:37 p.m. and attach it to the left-side port of the Harmony module.

"Good morning, Discovery. And good morning, Aki," astronaut Shannon Lucid called from Houston.

"Good morning, Shannon, and the team," Hoshide replied. "Thanks for a great song. That was a song from my high school friends. We're looking forward to a great day, an exciting day to install Japanese Kibo module and a great day of EVA and robotics. Looking forward to working with you guys."

Fossum and Garan spent the night in the station's Quest airlock module at a reduced pressure of 10.2 pounds per square inch to help purge nitrogen from their bloodstreams and prevent the bends after a day spent working in NASA's 5-psi spacesuits.

Today's spacewalk, the first of three planned for Discovery's mission, is scheduled to begin at 11:32 a.m. This will be the 110th spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998. Total station spacewalk time going into today's excursion was 686 hours and four minutes.

For identification, Fossum, call sign EV-1, will be wearing a suit with red stripes around the legs. Garan, call sign EV-2, will be wearing an unmarked suit.

Discovery was launched without a heat shield inspection boom normally used on the second day of a shuttle flight to look for signs of impact debris damage. The Kibo module, designed and built before the 2003 Columbia disaster, virtually fills the shuttle's cargo bay and there was no room for the 50-foot-long orbiter boom sensor system, or OBSS, robot arm extension.

As a result, the crew of the most recent shuttle assembly mission left their boom behind on the station in March. During today's spacewalk, after the station arm locks onto the boom, Garan will disconnect it from support fittings and keep-alive power. Nyberg and Hoshide, operating the station arm, will pull the boom away and position it for handoff to the shuttle's arm, operated by Nyberg and pilot Kenneth Ham. The boom will be used later in the mission to carry out a detailed inspection of Discovery's nose cap and wing leading edge panels, which experience the most extreme heating during re-entry.

While Garan works to disconnect the OBSS, Fossum will be busy removing restraints that held a robot arm camera in place before moving up to assist Garan. Both astronauts then will prepare Kibo for unberthing and installation, removing eight contamination covers protecting the module's common berthing system components and one of two window covers. At that point, Kibo will be ready for unberthing and installation on Harmony.

Unberthing is targeted for 4:37 p.m. with installation on the forward Harmony connecting module beginning around 6:07 p.m. If all goes well, the astronauts will open hatches and enter the new module Wednesday afternoon.

With Kibo preparations complete, Fossum and Garan will make their way to the starboard solar alpha rotary joint, or SARJ, on the right side of the station's main power truss.

The space station is equipped with two massive rotary joints on each side of the power truss. Ten-foot-wide motor-driven gears turn outboard solar arrays like paddle wheels to track the sun as the station circles the Earth, maximizing power production.

The left-side SARJ works normally in so-called "auto-track" mode, but the right-side unit has been used only sparingly since last fall because of extensive metallic contamination discovered during a spacewalk after engineers noticed high vibration levels and power usage.

Engineers now believe the contamination may have been caused by the breakdown of a super-hard outer layer. If cracks developed in that layer, the pressure exerted by the bearings the drive gears rolls through could cause additional damage, resulting in additional breakdown.

Whatever the cause, NASA would like to clean up the metal shavings if possible to permit engineers to rotate the outboard solar arrays as required to maximize power production.

Fossum will try a decidedly low-tech solution - applying Braycote grease to a small section of the race ring and then simply wiping the grease and trapped contaminants away. If it works, future shuttle crews may be asked to clean the entire race ring, permitting resumption of at least partial operation.

But because of the damage already done and the higher-than-normal vibration it causes, NASA managers believe astronauts eventually will be forced to move the starboard SARJ's 12 bearing assemblies to a backup outboard drive gear. But that is something they do not want to do unless absolutely necessary to avoid losing redundancy.

"We just recently squeezed in the SARJ cleaning task," Fossum said before launch. "It's really a test objective, to see what it would take to clan some of the metal that appears to be on the ring. We don't have a lot of information about it. So we're literally going out there with the kinds of tools you have in your garage.

"The first thing we're going to do is take a scraper to it and see if we can scrape some of that stuff off to make that surface a little more smooth for the rollers. Next, we're going to put down, literally, a little grease, it's a special space grease and then scrape on that and try to pick up material with it and wipe it off.

"And the third way is just putting down a little bit of this same grease and then taking a wipe, very much like a terry cloth towel, just to see if we can clean it up with this, knowing there's a very large ring out there and what we're trying to find is a technique that could be used to clean it up just a bit. But that's going to be a lot of work to go tackle the whole thing."

While Fossum works to clean a section of the race ring, Garan will re-install a SARJ bearing assembly that was removed earlier as part of ongoing troubleshooting.

Getting the starboard SARJ back in auto-track mode is critical for the long-term health of the space station. Only by tracking the sun as the station swings around the planet can the arrays generate the electrical power needed to operate all of the station's life support systems and experiment facilities.

"Even if we're able to rotate and be comfortable that the drive system can drive through any high current events that might occur, we still have the vibration that takes life out of the structure," said station Program Manager Mike Suffredini. "And so, that's one of the things we'll meter, how much we can rotate after we clean it up.

"So we've got a lot of forward work there to do. We've got to figure out how to clean this up even if we go to outboard ops, which I'm assuming is where we'll eventually end up, we need to clean a lot of this contamination off just so it doesn't liberate and find its way over (to the other drive gear) in the future."

Here is an updated timeline of today's activity (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision D of the NASA television schedule):


EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT

06/03/08
06:32 AM...02...13...30...Crew wakeup
07:00 AM...02...13...58...Flight director update (replay)
07:12 AM...02...14...10...EVA-1: 14.7 psi repress/hygiene break
07:57 AM...02...14...55...EVA-1: Airlock depress to 10.2 psi
08:02 AM...02...15...00...Station arm (SSRMS) maneuvers to OBSS grapple position
08:22 AM...02...15...20...EVA-1: Campout EVA preps
08:47 AM...02...15...45...ISS daily planning conference
09:57 AM...02...16...55...EVA-1: Spacesuit purge
10:12 AM...02...17...10...EVA-1: Spacesuit prebreathe
11:02 AM...02...18...00...EVA-1: Crew lock depressurization
11:32 AM...02...18...30...EVA-1: Spacesuits to battery power
11:37 AM...02...18...35...EVA-1: Airlock egress
12:07 PM...02...19...05...EVA-1 (Garan): OBSS boom transfer to shuttle
12:07 PM...02...19...05...EVA-1 (Fossum): Elbow camera release
12:27 PM...02...19...25...EVA-1 (Fossum): Open node 2 window covers
12:47 PM...02...19...45...EVA-1 (Fossum): MCAS
12:57 PM...02...19...55...EVA-1 (Fossum): OBSS boom transfer to shuttle
01:27 PM...02...20...25...EVA-1 (Fossum): JPM preps
01:42 PM...02...20...40...SRMS grapples OBSS boom
01:47 PM...02...20...45...SSRMS ungrapples OBSS boom
01:57 PM...02...20...55...EVA-1 (Garan): JPM preps
02:32 PM...02...21...30...SSRMS grapples Node 2
02:47 PM...02...21...45...SOKOL suit leak check
03:07 PM...02...22...05...SOKOL suit drying
03:17 PM...02...22...15...EVA-1 (Fossum): Release PM window launch locks
03:37 PM...02...22...35...EVA-1 (Fossum): S3/S4 SARJ datam A inspection
03:37 PM...02...22...35...EVA-1 (Garan): SARJ trundle bearing installation
04:17 PM...02...23...15...SSRMS grapples JPM
04:22 PM...02...23...20...EVA-1 (Fossum): SARJ cleaning test
04:37 PM...02...23...35...SSRMS unberths JPM
05:07 PM...03...00...05...EVA-1: Get aheads
05:32 PM...03...00...30...EVA-1: Cleanup and airlock ingress
06:02 PM...03...01...00...EVA-1: Airlock repressurization
06:07 PM...03...01...05...JPM installation
06:12 PM...03...01...10...Spacesuit servicing
06:27 PM...03...01...25...CBM first stage bolts
06:47 PM...03...01...45...CBM second stage bolts
07:22 PM...03...02...20...CBCS deactivation and removal
08:00 PM...03...02...58...Mission status briefing on NTV
08:17 PM...03...03...15...JPM vestibule pressure leak check
10:02 PM...03...05...00...ISS crew sleep begins
10:32 PM...03...05...30...STS crew sleep begins
11:00 PM...03...05...58...Daily video highlights reel on NTV

Spaceflight Now Plus
Additional coverage for subscribers:
VIDEO: CREW'S REMARKABLE CAMCORDER FOOTAGE FROM MONDAY PLAY
VIDEO: MONDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: SHUTTLE CREW WELCOMED INTO STATION PLAY
VIDEO: DISCOVERY DOCKS TO SPACE STATION PLAY
VIDEO: SHUTTLE PERFORMS RENDEZVOUS BACKFLIP PLAY
VIDEO: THE FLIGHT DAY 2 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE PLAY
VIDEO: CREW'S CAMCORDER FOOTAGE FROM FLIGHT DAY 2 PLAY
VIDEO: SUNDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: THE FLIGHT DAY 1 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE PLAY
VIDEO: EXTERNAL TANK SEEN AFTER SEPARATION PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: VAB ROOF PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA CS-1 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA CS-2 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA CS-6 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: FRONT CAMERA PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: BEACH TRACKER PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PAD PERIMETER PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: UCS-12 TRACKER PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: UCS-23 TRACKER PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PLAYALINDA BEACH PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PATRICK AIR FORCE BASE PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PRESS SITE PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: WEST TOWER PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 009 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 041 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 049 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 050 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 051 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 054 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 060 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 061 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 063 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 070 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 071 PLAY

VIDEO: LIFTOFF OF DISCOVERY WITH KIBO LAB! PLAY
VIDEO: ONBOARD CAMERA FOOTAGE OF TANK FOAM FALLING PLAY
VIDEO: INSIDE MISSION CONTROL DURING LAUNCH PLAY
VIDEO: POST-LAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE PLAY

VIDEO: FINAL PRE-LAUNCH POLLS GIVE "GO" FOR LIFTOFF PLAY
VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS ARRIVE AT LAUNCH PAD 39A PLAY
VIDEO: CREW DEPARTS QUARTERS FOR LAUNCH PAD PLAY
VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS DON SPACESUITS FOR LAUNCH PLAY
VIDEO: NARRATED RECAP OF KIBO LAB'S PRE-FLIGHT CAMPAIGN PLAY
VIDEO: NARRATED RECAP OF DISCOVERY'S PRE-FLIGHT CAMPAIGN PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH PAD GANTRY RETRACTED FRIDAY NIGHT PLAY
VIDEO: TIME-LAPSE OF GANTRY ROLLBACK PLAY
VIDEO: FRIDAY'S COUNTDOWN STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: PRE-LAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE PLAY
VIDEO: BRIEFING ON KIBO LABORATORY FACILITY PLAY
VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS ARRIVE AT THE CAPE FOR LAUNCH PLAY
VIDEO: WEDNESDAY'S COUNTDOWN AND WEATHER BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: NARRATED MISSION PREVIEW MOVIE PLAY

VIDEO: NEWS BRIEFING FOLLOWING FLIGHT READINESS REVIEW PLAY

VIDEO: INTERVIEW WITH COMMANDER MARK KELLY PLAY
VIDEO: INTERVIEW WITH PILOT KEN HAM PLAY
VIDEO: INTERVIEW WITH MS1 KAREN NYBERG PLAY
VIDEO: INTERVIEW WITH MS2 RON GARAN PLAY
VIDEO: INTERVIEW WITH MS3 MIKE FOSSUM PLAY
VIDEO: INTERVIEW WITH MS4 AKIHIKO HOSHIDE PLAY

VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS PRACTICE EVACUATION OF SHUTTLE PLAY
VIDEO: CREW BOARDS DISCOVERY FOR PRACTICE COUNTDOWN PLAY
VIDEO: TRAINING SESSIONS AT LAUNCH PAD AND BUNKER PLAY
VIDEO: CREW NEWS CONFERENCE AT LAUNCH PAD 39A PLAY
VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS ARRIVE FOR PRACTICE COUNTDOWN PLAY

VIDEO: TIME-LAPSE OF GANTRY ENCLOSING DISCOVERY PLAY
VIDEO: PAD'S ORBITER ACCESS ARM SWUNG INTO POSITION PLAY
VIDEO: TIME-LAPSE OF CRAWLER RETREATING AFTER ROLLOUT PLAY
VIDEO: SHUTTLE DISCOVERY ROLLED TO PAD 39A PLAY

VIDEO: SHUTTLE AND STATION PROGRAM BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: STS-124 MISSION OVERVIEW PART 1 | PART 2
VIDEO: PREVIEW BRIEFING ON MISSION'S SPACEWALKS PLAY
VIDEO: THE ASTRONAUTS' PRE-FLIGHT NEWS BRIEFING PLAY

VIDEO: KIBO LABORATORY TRAVELS TO THE LAUNCH PAD PLAY
VIDEO: TRANSPORT CANISTER WITH KIBO ROTATED UPRIGHT PLAY
VIDEO: CRANE PLACES KIBO MODULE INTO TRANSPORT CANISTER PLAY

VIDEO: DISCOVERY HOISTED FOR ATTACHMENT TO FUEL TANK PLAY
VIDEO: THE SHUTTLE MOVES TO THE VEHICLE ASSEMBLY BUILDING PLAY
MORE: STS-124 VIDEO COVERAGE
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