CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Shuttle Discovery will remain at the International Space Station an extra day to give its crew more time to pack up an Italian moving van for a return trip to Earth.
With the joined shuttle-station crew hustling to load dirty laundry, dead batteries, surplus equipment and other garbage into the Leonardo cargo carrier, NASA officials decided late Thursday to let the astronauts finish the job at a more relaxed pace.
| Crew Conference |
| The 10 astronauts and cosmonauts aboard shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station will hold a traditional in-flight news conference at 3:42 a.m. EST (08:42 GMT) Friday. Click here for live coverage. |
"We've got every confidence that you could get the stowage done, but we've actually got quite a lot of analysis to do down here on the ground," astronaut Cady Coleman told the crew from NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas.
"We know you could finish, but we need a little more time.""OK, we copy that," shuttle skipper Jim Wetherbee replied.
The official handover of command between the so-called Expedition One and Expedition Two crews at the station now will take place Sunday, a few hours after Discovery's delayed departure from the outpost.
Led by veteran Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev, the Expedition Two crew includes American flight engineers Susan Helms and Jim Voss.
The trio will be replacing outgoing station commander Bill Shepherd and his two cosmonaut colleagues, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, the three of whom now will return to Earth aboard Discovery on Wednesday, capping a 141-day stay in space.
The first station relief crew arrived at the station last Saturday along with five tons of supplies and equipment stowed in the shuttle-borne Leonardo cargo carrier. About the size of a family mini-van, the freighter was unloaded faster than expected.
Shuttle mission specialist Andy Thomas, however, reported that the 10 astronauts and cosmonauts aboard Discovery and the station were having a bit more trouble packing up the moving van.
"It's going slowly," said Thomas, who is serving as the "loadmaster" aboard the joined ships.
The astronauts and cosmonauts had been rushing to finish repacking a ton of gear and garbage aboard the Leonardo carrier in time to stow it in the shuttle's cargo bay Friday. The job kept the two crews up past their bedtime Thursday.
With Shepherd and his Russian crewmates in tow, Discovery now is scheduled to land here at Kennedy Space Center about 1 a.m. EST (06:00 GMT) next Wednesday.
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