CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Shuttle Discovery's astronauts cruised to a late night rendezvous at the International Space Station Saturday, taxiing up to the frontier outpost with a fresh crew that will be relieving its inaugural tenants.
With the shuttle and the station flying in formation at 25 times the speed of sound, Discovery commander Jim Wetherbee eased his winged spaceship up to the international outpost at 1:38 a.m. EST (06:38 GMT).
| Welcome Ceremony On Tap |
| Hatches between shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station are expected to swing open between 3:30 and 4 a.m. EST (08:30 and 09:00 GMT) today. Click here for live coverage of the first handshakes and hugs between the Expedition One and Expedition Two crews. |
Docking ring latches on both craft then snapped shut, linking the 100-ton shuttle and the equally massive station in an orbit some 235 miles (376 kilometers) above the planet.
Anxiously awaiting Discovery's arrival: outpost commander Bill Shepherd and his two cosmonaut colleagues, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, the three of whom are wrapping up a vanguard voyage aboard the station."You have a great looking ship there, Captain Shepherd," Wetherbee told the station skipper as he made his final approach to the outpost.
The high-flying hookup took place about an hour later than planned.
The extra time was needed to lock in place the station's huge but fragile American solar wings, which were maneuvered into an edge-on position so they wouldn't be spoiled by toxic shuttle thruster exhaust.
A balky latch on the starboard U.S. array left the shuttle crew cooling its heels as Discovery hovered some 400 feet (121 meters) in front of the docking port at the forward end of the station's U.S. Destiny science laboratory.
NASA flight rules call for both the power-producing wings to be fastened firmly in place so that vibrations from shuttle dockings don't damage them.
With a wingspan of 240 feet (73 meters), the gold-and-blue arrays could be seen glimmering against pitch-black space in still video images beamed to Earth from cameras aboard Discovery.
The station looked like a bright but distant star in pictures sent back when the shuttle still was more than 40 miles (64 kilometers) away from the 17-story outpost.
Coming two days after Discovery's launch from Kennedy Space Center, the docking marked the arrival of the station's second full-time crew: Russian commander Yuri Usachev and U.S. flight engineers Susan Helms and Jim Voss.
The three will replace Shepherd and his cosmonaut colleagues, who have been putting the station through its initial "shakedown cruise" for the past 128 days. The new crew will spend the next four months outfitting the Destiny lab and overseeing further outpost construction work.
"Shep, we're looking forward to coming aboard," Voss told his colleague over ship-to-ship radio just before shuttle thrusters were fired to begin the final stages of the orbital rendezvous.
"We're cleaning up...giving the ship a clean sweep-down," the U.S. Navy captain replied.
Hatches between the ships had been scheduled to swing open about 2:45 a.m. EST (07:45 GMT), but the joining of the shuttle and station crews will be postponed an hour due to Discovery's delayed arrival.
A short welcoming ceremony then will mark the start of what will be a four-day changing of the guard at the station.
The highly choreographed handover is designed to give Shepherd as much time as possible to brief incoming commander Usachev while Helms and Voss wrap up duties aboard Discovery.
To that end, Usachev and fellow cosmonaut Gidzenko will trades places later today, with the former heading over to the station while the latter joins Discovery's crew aboard the shuttle.
Krikalev and Voss will switch ships Sunday after Voss finishes a spacewalk aimed at prepping the outpost for the scheduled mid-April arrival of the station's Canadian-built robot arm.
That excursion is set to begin about 11:47 p.m. EST Saturday (04:47 GMT Sunday).
The three-stage transition will culminate late Tuesday when Shepherd boards the shuttle and Helms moves over to the station. The final exchange will take place after a second planned spacewalk, which Helms will direct from Discovery's flight deck earlier that day.
Shuttle mission specialists Paul Richards and Andy Thomas will carry out that sortie, which is scheduled to start at about 11:47 p.m. EST (04:47 GMT) Tuesday. Their job: mounting a stowage platform and spare cooling system equipment on the exterior of the Destiny laboratory.
Discovery and the station will remain linked in space for the next week. The combined crews will spend much of that time unloading some five tons of equipment and supplies from an Italian moving van now nestled in the shuttle's cargo bay.
With Shepherd and company in tow, Discovery is scheduled to depart the station about 11 p.m. EST March 17 (04:00 GMT March 18), leaving the new outpost crew behind. NASA's 103rd shuttle flight is due to end with a 2 a.m. EST (07:00 GMT) March 20 landing here at the agency's coastal Florida spaceport.
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