HOUSTON - The two astronaut crews at the International Space
Station (ISS) hailed the success of their orbital construction job today as
they readied NASA's shuttle Atlantis for a Sunday departure.
The space
station's Expedition
13 crew and NASA's six-astronaut team on Atlantis' STS-115 spaceflight took
a certain satisfaction in the smooth success to date of their mission to jump
start construction of the orbital laboratory.
"It's very
exciting to see the station assembly kick back into high gear," STS-115 mission
specialist Daniel Burbank during a joint press conference aboard the ISS. "We're
all very anxious to see how the future flights go along."
NASA's STS-115
mission, commanded by veteran shuttle
astronaut Brent Jett, has delivered new
solar arrays and a 17.5-ton pair of portside trusses to the ISS, marking
the first new segment to the ISS since late 2002. Construction of the orbital
lab stalled as NASA recovered from the 2003 Columbia accident and
returned its three-orbiter fleet to flight.
"I'd rate
this crew 110 percent," Paul Dye, NASA's lead shuttle flight director, said in
a mission status briefing here at the Johnson Space Center today. "They've done
an outstanding job up to this point."
Three busy
spacewalks and eight days into their busy 11-day mission, the joint ISS and
STS-115 astronaut crews have unfurled
a 240-foot (73-meter) pair of power-generating solar wings and its vital
radiator. The crew had a
half-day off this morning.
"I think
the successful deployment of the arrays marked the success, in our terms, of
our mission," STS-115 mission specialist Joseph Tanner said. "There are a lot
of things that had to go right for that to happen."
Atlantis'
STS-115 flight marks yet another milestone for the space station's Expedition
13 crew. Station commander Pavel
Vinogradov and flight engineer Jeffrey
Williams not only saw NASA's second return to flight mission when
the space
shuttle Discovery arrived in July, but also received a new crewmember in
the form of European
Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter.
Vinogradov
and Williams will leave a larger ISS when they undock on Sept. 28 than the one
they arrived at on April 1.
"We've gone
through some very significant milestones during Expedition 13," Williams said. "It's
a great thing and a great honor to have participated in them."
Packing
up
One remaining
job for the both ISS and STS-115 astronauts is the packing of cargo that will
leave the orbital laboratory aboard Atlantis early Sunday.
NASA
officials said the Atlantis crew will return about 1,000 pounds (453 kilograms)
of equipment, including a set of cold bags filled with biological specimens
from the space station's Minus Eighty Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI), a
suitcase-sized materials exposure experiment that spacewalkers retrieved
from the ISS exterior on Friday and the space suits used during the three
STS-115 spacewalks.
According to the crew's Flight Day Eight execute package, they are also returning about 78 pounds (35 kilograms) of clothing belonging to Vinogradov and Williams.
"This is
what I'd describe as an incidental transfer," Dye said, adding that there is
only a limited amount of space in Atlantis' middeck for cargo.
Earlier
today, Vinogradov also shut the hatch on a disposable Russian cargo ship that
will be jettisoned from the ISS once Atlantis leaves. Packed with trash and
unneeded items, the Progress
21 supply ship will undock from the space station's Russian-built Zvezda
service module Monday at 8:28 p.m. EDT (0028 Sept. 19 GMT) and ultimately burn
up in the Earth's atmosphere.
Dye said
shuttle astronauts will also transfer about 90 pounds (40 kilograms) of oxygen from
Atlantis to the ISS.
NASA
officials said the Atlantis crew will have transferred about 1,000 pounds (452
kilograms) of water - a byproduct of the orbiter's three fuel cells - to the
ISS before undocking.
Atlantis is
scheduled to undock at 8:50 a.m. EDT (1250 GMT) and, weather permitting, landing
at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 5:57 a.m. EDT (0957 GMT) on Sept. 20.
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