This story was updated at 7:02 a.m. EDT.
Astronauts aboard the space shuttle
Discovery will rest up for the trip home and may take a call from U.S.
President Barack Obama Tuesday as they enter the home stretch of their mission
to boost the International Space Station to full power.
Discovery skipper Lee Archambault
and his crew are slated to speak with President Obama at about 9:40 a.m. EDT
(1340 GMT) when he calls from the Oval Office to congratulate the astronauts on
their successful construction flight, according to ABC News.
The president is expected to be
joined Congressional leaders and middle school students from the Washington,
D.C., area when he makes his call, ABC News
reported. President Obama's call comes as he proposes a budget that includes a $2.4
billion funding boost for NASA and reaffirms a 2010 retirement date
for the agency's space shuttle fleet.
The 10 astronauts aboard Discovery
and the space station will also discuss
their 13-day mission to deliver the last set of gleaming U.S. solar arrays
and a new crewmember to the station with reporters and move some cargo between
their two ships before settling into some free time before they head home.
"It's important for us to rest up
the orbiter crew particular since in just a few days from now they're going to
have to successfully execute a re-entry and landing," Kwatsi Alibaruho, NASA's
lead station flight director for the flight, told reporters late Monday from
Houston. "They've had a lot of time off coming to them."
Discovery will undock from the
station Wednesday at 3:53 p.m. EDT (1953 GMT), just one day before a Russian
Soyuz spacecraft is poised to blast off from the Central Asian spaceport of
Baikonor Cosmodrome with a new crew and American billionaire
Charles Simonyi - who is paying more than $30 million for his second trip
to space. The Soyuz will arrive at the space station on Saturday, the same day
Discovery is due to land in Florida.
Archambault and his crew launched
March 15 after a month of delays to ferry Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and
a $298 million pair
of expansive solar wings to the space station.
Wakata is Japan's first long-term resident
of the space station and will watch over the outpost's European Columbus module
and Japanese Kibo laboratory, a massive orbital room the size of a tour bus,
during this three-month stay. He is replacing NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus, who
is completing her own four-month flight and will return to Earth aboard
Discovery.
"After four months up here and
having a wonderful time, I'm looking forward to being outside," Magnus said
earlier this week.
Discovery's crew performed three
spacewalks to install the station's fourth and final set of solar wings to complete
the space station's power grid. The arrays are moored to a 16-ton girder
that, when mounted to the starboard edge of the station, completed the orbiting
lab's backbone-like main truss. After more than a decade of construction, the
station is now 81 percent complete, longer than a football field and weighs
nearly 1 million pounds.
"Overall we're absolutely thrilled
and we're very happy that we were able to accomplish what we did," Alibaruho
said. "We certainly accomplished our highest priority objectives, and certainly
the ones that we were most concerned about were executed flawlessly without
problems."
The shuttle astronauts also
delivered a spare part for the space station's urine recycler, which filters
astronaut urine back into pure water for drinking, food preparation bathing and
other uses. They recycling system had been broken since last December, but
appears to be working well after the repairs.
Mission Control roused Discovery's
crew Tuesday at 6:13 a.m. EDT (1013 GMT) with the tune "Andrew's Song" by the band
Treestump. The song was chosen specifically for
shuttle astronaut John Phillips, whose daughter is a member of the band.
"It is great to wake up to the
sounds of the Houston band Treestump, including my
daughter on base guitar," Phillips radioed Mission Control. "We're
looking forward to a day of getting our big motor home ready for the open road
and pulling out of the driveway."
SPACE.com is providing continuous
coverage of STS-119 with reporter Clara Moskowitz and senior editor Tariq Malik
in New York. Click here
for mission updates and SPACE.com's live NASA TV video feed.
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