HOUSTON - After
delivering tons of new equipment and, supplies and fresh food to the
International Space Station (ISS), the crew of the space shuttle Discovery
packed up their cargo pod and returned it to the shuttle's payload bay for the
trip back to Earth.
Discovery
astronaut Wendy Lawrence, an STS-114 mission specialist, and pilot James Kelly deftly
placed the Italian-built Raffaello cargo
module back into its berth aboard the shuttle after a week of unpacking
supplies for the ISS and stowing trash, unneeded equipment and the personal
effects left onboard the station by previous crewmembers.
The move
sets the stage for Discovery's departure from the ISS, which is scheduled to begin
Saturday at 3:22 a.m. EDT (0722 GMT). The shuttle and its STS-114 crew are
scheduled to land at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on Aug. 8.
Altogether,
Discovery hauled about six tons (12,107 pounds) of new equipment up to the
International Space Station (ISS), though only 3,768 pounds were tucked away
onboard Raffaello, which is one of four Italian-built Multi-Purpose Logistics
Modules used to ferry supplies to the station aboard U.S. shuttles. Discovery
also carried about 1,394 pounds of cargo earmarked for the ISS in its middeck.
The rest of the cargo, a new control
moment gyroscope, spare
parts platform and their related cables,
were installed outside the ISS over the course of three spacewalks.
Discovery
is the first shuttle to resupply the ISS since the Endeavour orbiter docked at
the station on Nov. 25, 2002. The loss of the Columbia orbiter and its
seven-astronaut crew on Feb. 1, 2003 prompted NASA to ground its three
remaining shuttles and spend two and half years redesigning shuttle external
tanks and developing new tools for orbiter safety. Columbia was brought down by
a 1.67-pound piece of external tank foam that pulled free during launch and
damaged the orbiter's heat shield.
In the
interim, only Russian Progress cargo ships and Soyuz spacecraft delivered fresh
crews and supplies to the ISS.
After Discovery's
launch, at least three pieces of external tank foam - the largest weighing
about a pound - fell from the orbiter's external tank, disappointing the
shuttle's astronauts and mission managers who had hoped they had solve d the
problem. Shuttle officials grounded future launches until they understand and
solve the new foam loss problem.
To prepare
for another potential delay between shuttle resupply flight to the ISS, STS-114
mission controllers gave Discovery and the space station crew an extra day of
docked operations to allow more time to collect spare parts and other items
around the shuttle to leave onboard the orbital laboratory.
Laptop
computers, additional water, spare exercise equipment parts and tools were
among the added few hundred pounds that Discovery's crew pulled from
"The most important
thing, I think, are the laptop computers," said Mark Ferring, lead ISS flight
director during the STS-114 mission, earlier this week. "We're going to steal
most of those computers that the shuttle has."
Laptop
computers are the sole display and control devices aboard the ISS, and some of
the station machines have experienced screen problems, station officials have
said.
Batteries,
spacewalk and cabin tools and water were also on the docket for the additional
transfer, Ferring said.
Later
today, Discovery astronauts will wield both the station and shuttle robotic
arms to hand off the orbiter's 50-foot (15-meter) inspection boom for stowage
inside the payload bay.
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