Helping them pack: New station skipper Frank Culbertson and his two cosmonaut colleagues -- Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Turin, who took command of the outpost earlier this week.The departure of the outgoing crew will bring to a close a crucial five-and-a-half-month tour of duty that involved two key construction jobs: Mounting and activating the station's Canadian robot arm and an airlock that will provide a orbital portal for spacewalkers.
Coupled together, the addition of the $600 million crane and the $164 million airlock capped the first full phase of a $60 billion station construction project that involves 16 nations and 100,000 workers from four continents.
Without the two key components, NASA would not have been unable to resume assembly early next year of the station's central truss, which will serve as a base for European and Japanese research laboratories to be added to the outpost in 2004 and 2005.
"I'd like everybody to know that our work up here has been incredibly productive," said Helms.
"This crew, I feel, has had a large impact on the progress of space station growth and in helping it move toward its end as being a full-up facility that's going to be able to support science and other objectives for many years to come."
Still, Helms said she has "mixed emotions" about leaving the outpost. She'll be happy to see family and friends again, but she'll have to start life almost from scratch when she returns.
Single and with no children, the 43-year-old severed almost all earthly ties prior to setting sail for the station.
Like a soldier preparing for a lengthy tour abroad, the Air Force lieutenant colonel ended her lease at her apartment in Houston, cutting off telephone, cable television, Internet and utility services in the process.
She found a new home for her cat, Mango, cancelled her credit cards, moved all her worldly belongings into long-term storage and placed insurance policies and information on investment accounts into a safety deposit box.
"And so, right now this is my home, and I'm not quite ready to uproot," she said. "But it looks like we've got a new crew here and they're going to go ahead and kick us out and bring us back."
Not before two planned spacewalks, however, can be carried out at the outpost by astronauts aboard visiting shuttle Discovery.
Shuttle mission specialists Daniel Barry and Patrick Forrester will don bulky spacesuits and head outside the joined shuttle-station complex about 10:15 a.m. EDT (1415 GMT) Thursday.
The job at hand: Mounting a pallet of coolant tanks on the station's $600 million U.S. electric power tower. Weighing in at 1,200 pounds (540 kilograms), the tanks hold a reserve supply of ammonia coolant for the air conditioning system housed within the station's $1.4 billion U.S. Destiny science laboratory.
A second spacewalk to route power cables outside the lab is scheduled for Saturday.
A formal change-of-command ceremony, meanwhile, now is expected to take place between the two spacewalks.
Originally set for early next week, the traditional ritual was moved up to Wednesday but then delayed when the joined crews got bogged down in other work on the outpost.
"This doesn't mean that we won't be on the station tonight -- just in case you were wondering," Culbertson joked with ground controllers.
"Understand," fellow astronaut Joan Higginbotham replied from NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston.
Culbertson and his colleagues moved into the station Monday. The outgoing trio now is officially considered part of Discovery's crew and will reside onboard the shuttle during the rest of its eight-day stay at the station.
Discovery remains scheduled to depart the station next Monday, heading toward a 12:48 p.m. EDT (1648 GMT) Aug. 22 landing here at Kennedy Space Center.
Culbertson and his crew are scheduled to remain in space until Dec. 9.
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