HOUSTON - With nine astronauts aboard the
International Space Station (ISS), NASA's space shuttle Discovery has already
met one of the major goals of its STS-121 spaceflight, a mission flight
director said Thursday.
Tony Ceccacci, lead shuttle flight director for Discovery's STS-121 mission, said
the orbiter's docking at the ISS today marks the start of a spaceflight
marathon for the shuttle's seven-astronaut crew.
"They're
all pumped up and ready to go," Ceccacci said of
Discovery's crew during a mission update here at Johnson Space Center (JSC). "I
think they're probably going to be on an adrenaline rush until we get the main
shuttle nose gear touchdown on entry day."
Veteran spaceflyer Steven
Lindsey, commander of Discovery's STS-121 mission, eased the 100-ton space
plane into a berth at the end of the space station's U.S.-built Destiny lab at 10:52
a.m. EDT
(1452 GMT) today. Less than two hours later, Lindsey and his six STS-121
crewmates were exchanging handshakes and hugs with ISS
Expedition 13 commander Pavel Vinogradov and flight
engineer Jeffrey
Williams.
"I'm very
happy how things are going," Ceccacci said.
Among the
highlights of today's orbital rendezvous was Discovery's orbital
back flip, which Lindsey conducted while flying just 600 feet (182 meters)
below the ISS. During that time, Vinogradov and
Williams snapped hundreds of still images that were later relayed down to
Earth. But the event was also broadcast live via cameras attached to the space
station's exterior.
"A picture
is worth 1,000 words, how beautiful that looked," Ceccacci
said of the shuttle back flip, known as a rendezvous pitch maneuver. "We're all
interested in the digital photography that the station crew took."
Going by
the numbers, Vinogradov and Williams took 350
pictures of Discovery between them while Lindsey put the orbiter through its
orbital back flip. About 125 of those images have been downloaded by mission
controllers on Earth for waiting analysts. The rest are expected to be received
by late this afternoon for study to determine the health of Discovery's heat
shield, Ceccacci said.
Meanwhile,
the space station hit a major milestone this afternoon, when STS-121 mission
specialist Thomas
Reiter moved his Soyuz seat liner into a Russian-built spacecraft already
docked at the station. Coupled with a safety check of Reiter's Russian-built Sokol flight suit, the seat liner installation almost
assures Reiter's position as the third ISS crewmember.
Space
station crews have been limited to two astronauts since the 2003 Columbia accident, due
the drop in supplies that followed the grounding of NASA's shuttle fleet.
Reiter is
the first German citizen to visit the ISS and the first European Space Agency
(ESA) astronaut marked for an extended tour aboard the orbital outpost.
Ceccacci
said that while Reiter has returned the ISS to its three-person capacity on
paper, space station flight controllers are holding their judgment until all of
his supplies, personal items and other equipment are stowed aboard the orbital
laboratory.
"Of course,
the majority of those are on the MPLM side," Ceccacci
said, adding that the supplies are still packed inside the Italian-built
Leonardo cargo container - known as a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM).
In a
mission summary uplinked to the STS-121 crew this
morning, flight controllers reported that the sensors behind each of
Discovery's wings recorded three impacts each, which appear similar to those
seen during Discovery's STS-114 flight.
"There may
be some correlation between the two missions," the crew summary reported.
Ceccacci
said mission managers will likely discuss those issues during an STS-121
Mission Management Team meeting later today.
An
in-flight fix to a finicky thruster heater - in which Discovery's crew simply
oriented the small left aft thruster towards the Sun to keep it warm - also
worked as expected during today's ISS docking, and allowed Lindsey to make fine
adjustments with the engine, rather than rely on the shuttle's larger reaction
control jets, Ceccacci added.
Aside from
those issues, Discovery's STS-121 mission - and its crew -
are sailing quietly along.
"You know,
it's boring to us that it's quiet, but that's a good thing," Ceccacci said. "That means everything is going well."
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