Space
shuttle astronauts will bid farewell to the International Space Station Tuesday
and begin the trip home after more than a week linked to
the orbiting laboratory.
The shuttle
Discovery is due to undock from the space station today at 3:26 p.m. EDT (1926
GMT) to end about nine days at the orbiting laboratory. The shuttle's seven
astronauts delivered tons of supplies and new
science gear, as well as a new crewmember for the space station's crew.
"It's been
a really amazing experience working up here on the International Space Station,
with 13 people working together as a big team," Discovery astronaut Christer
Fuglesang of Sweden told Mission Control early Tuesday.
Once
Discovery undocks from the station, shuttle pilot Kevin Ford will fly the
spacecraft on a victory lap of sorts around the orbiting lab while his
crewmates take photographs. The maneuver, known as a fly-around, is used to
document the current state of the station.
Before
flight, Ford said he was eagerly looking forward to flying Discovery around the
station, but it will be a bit different today. Discovery's small maneuvering thrusters
have been offline since the shuttle launched due to a leaky thruster. Ford will
rely on the shuttle's larger thrusters for the shuttle's departure, something
astronauts have trained for.
"I want to
say only to have a safe trip and have a safe flight back," station commander
Gennady Padalka, a Russian cosmonaut, told Discovery's crew late Monday.
Skywatchers
in the United States and southern Canada will have several opportunities,
weather permitting, to spot the
shuttle and space station as they fly overhead. The best opportunities run
through Wednesday.
Station stocked
up on science
Discovery launched
to the station Aug. 28 on a 13-day mission to deliver new supplies and
science experiments. Three spacewalks were performed to retrieve old
experiments from the station's hull, replace a massive coolant tank and tend to
some other maintenance tasks.
Altogether,
the astronauts delivered 18,548 pounds (8,413 kg) of supplies to the space
station and are returning about 5,223 pounds (2,369 kg) of trash and surplus
items back to Earth.
The nearly
11-year-old space station is now 84 percent complete, has an internal living
space equivalent to the cabin of a jumbo jet, and weighs about 720,000 pounds (326,586
kg).
The astronauts
also delivered a $5 million treadmill named after TV
comedian Stephen Colbert.
Colbert won the naming rights for a new space
station room in an online NASA poll earlier this year, but the space agency
named the module Tranquility - the Apollo 11 moon base - to honor the 40th anniversary
of the first manned moon landing. NASA named the new station treadmill the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, or COLBERT, as a consolation prize.
The
treadmill launched in more than 100 pieces but won't be assembled until later, after
Discovery leaves and a new Japanese
cargo ship arrives at the station in mid-September.
The shuttle
also ferried NASA astronaut Nicole Stott to the space station to join the
orbiting laboratory's six-person crew. Stott is beginning a three-month space mission
and replaced fellow astronaut Tim Kopra, who has lived aboard the station for
nearly two months and will return home aboard Discovery.
Kopra has
said that he's looking forward to seeing his family again, and perhaps taking
his first sip of beer in months after he lands. But the space station, he
added, has secured a permanent place in his heart.
"I'm going
to miss this place," Kopra said Sunday in a televised interview. "I'm going to
miss the beautiful views, the sunsets and sunrises."
Discovery
is due to land Thursday evening at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
SPACE.com
is providing complete coverage of Discovery's STS-128 mission to the
International Space Station with Managing Editor Tariq Malik and Staff Writer
Clara Moskowitz in New York. Click
here for shuttle mission updates and a link to NASA TV.
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