This
story was updated at 9:33 p.m. EDT.
HOUSTON -
Astronauts aboard NASA's shuttle Endeavour took some time off Wednesday in a
well deserved break from their record-long construction flight at the
International Space Station (ISS).
Commanded
by veteran shuttle flyer Dominic Gorie, Endeavour's seven astronauts are in the midst of a
packed 16-day mission to deliver a new crewmember, Japanese
module and Canadian-built robot to the orbiting laboratory. The spaceflight
is the longest shuttle mission to the station to date, with Gorie and his crew well ahead of their
original work schedule.
"They've
gotten far enough ahead that we certainly won't have to twist their arms too
much to get them to rest," ISS flight director Kwatsi Alibahuro told reporters late Tuesday.
"This is a long enough mission."
Station
commander Peggy Whitson, who has a reputation for working through breaks, said
even she reveled in the hiatus from orbital work.
"We're
having a great time taking a break, just relaxing a bit," Whitson told CBS
News Wednesday night during a series of televised interviews. "I think we
really needed it ... It was nice to be able to get eight hours of sleep."
Break
time in space
Endeavour's
STS-123 astronauts have performed three
of the record five spacewalks planned for their orbital construction
mission since their March 11 launch. They delivered the Japanese Logistics
Pressurized module - an attic-like room for Japan's tour bus-sized Kibo station lab -
as well as Canada's two-armed
Dextre
maintenance robot, which astronauts assembled over the course of their
three spacewalks.
"The view
out the window is better than movie you might think about," Gorie told NBC News. "Everybody's
been doing a little bit of that, and we had an opportunity for folks to get on
a conference with their families, say hello and see their smiling faces on a
computer laptop."
Mission
managers added today's off-duty day to Endeavour's flight to break up what
would otherwise be a continuous marathon of exhausting work for the shuttle's
seven astronauts.
"We added
that extra flight day in the mix to get some time off between spacewalks and
the late [heat shield] inspection," Gorie told SPACE.com before flight. "That made the
flight a lot easier to contemplate because you can't run a crew for 15 or 16
days without a little bit of a break."
Gorie and
his crew are preparing for their mission's fourth spacewalk, a Thursday
excursion to test a shuttle repair technique in which astronauts will use a
caulk gun-like tool to squeeze a
pink ablative goo into intentionally dinged heat shield tiles to
test its effectiveness as an in-flight fix.
NASA has
kept a close watch on shuttle heat shield health since the 2003 loss of the
shuttle Columbia and its crew due to wing damage. The caulk gun and goo-like
material is the only repair technique yet to be tested under actual spaceflight
conditions.
Japan's
"Hope" in space
Early
this morning - but dinner time for the astronauts aboard Endeavour and the
ISS - the 10 spaceflyers aboard both spacecraft convened for a rare meal
together in the station's Russian segment.
"Our motto
is 'it's all about the sauce,'" Whitson told the
visiting shuttle crew with a laugh during the
partially televised dinner. "It doesn't matter what food it is as long as
there's sauce!"
They used
chopsticks to sample Japanese space cuisine courtesy of Japanese astronaut
Takao Doi, who
is also testing new space undergarments and an orbital boomerang during his
flight.
"The
Japanese food was the best food we've had so far on this flight," Gorie told Japan's
Prime Minister Yasuo
Fukuda during a space-to-ground video link late Wednesday.
Fukuda
lauded the astronauts' successful installation of the logistics module for
Japan's massive laboratory Kibo,
which means "Hope" in Japanese. The small module is a storage room for its much
larger parent Kibo lab. Whitson and Gorie both said the honor was theirs while Doi gave Fukuda and
students in Japan a tour of the new module.
"The Kibo module is
filled with the dreams of the Japanese people and I'm very happy to fulfill the
first step," Doi
said. "It's a very small space, about four and a half tatami mats wide."
Endeavour astronauts are now gearing up for Thursday's spacewalk, which includes the replacement of a station circuit breaker box in addition to the heat shield repair test.
"They've
all been working so hard, that I think they'll make good use of their time
tomorrow to relax and get some rest in preparation for the two remaining
spacewalks still ahead for this mission," Alibaruho said.
NASA is
broadcasting Endeavour's STS-123 mission live on NASA TV. Click here for SPACE.com's
shuttle mission coverage and NASA TV feed.
advertisement
