Mission Goals
Mission specialist Pat Forrester, the only rookie on the shuttle taxi crew, will use Discovery's 50-foot (15-meter) robot arm to lift the moving van up to a berthing port on the station's Unity module so it can be unpacked.
The joined shuttle-station crews then will load it up with 2,000 pounds (607 kilograms) of garbage and surplus gear for a return trip to Earth.
Also on tap: Two spacewalks that will be carried out by Barry and Forrester.
A pallet of ammonia coolant tanks will be mounted to the outside of the station during the first excursion and power cables will be set up during the second sortie.
Weighing in at 1,200 pounds (540 kilograms), the ammonia tanks will provide a back-up supply of coolant for the air conditioning system housed in the station's Destiny science laboratory.
The 45-foot (13.6-meter) power cables will serve as a back-up to electrical wires that will be hooked up to critical heaters on a station truss segment that is to be launched to the outpost aboard shuttle Atlantis early next year.
Both of the spacewalks will be staged out of the shuttle rather than the station's new $164 million airlock, which was delivered to the station and activated last month.
The reason: NASA managers weren't certain the so-called Quest airlock would be in place prior to Discovery's flight. So a decision was made to stage the spacewalks out of the shuttle's airlock to reduce the amount of training required for the excursions.
The two sorties represent the only assembly work scheduled during the shuttle's eight-day stay at the station. A Russian airlock is slated to be launched to the station in mid-September, but the resumption of outpost construction won't begin in earnest again until a series of shuttle flights that will kick off in late February 2002.
Those missions will involve erecting the rest of the station's central truss, which eventually will stretch 356 feet (108 meters) from end to end. Three more U.S. electric power towers then will be mounted so that Japanese and European research labs can be launched to the station in 2004 and 2005, respectively.
For shuttle skipper Horowitz, meanwhile, Discovery's 12-day round trip to the station will mark a long-awaited get-together with Usachev, Helms and Voss. All four flew together on a station maintenance mission in May 2000.
"It'll almost be like an extraterrestrial reunion," Horowitz said. "There's going to be a lot of neat emotions seeing them again, and it'll be really exciting to be welcomed aboard the International Space Station."
Discovery's departure from the outpost, however, will be a bit bittersweet as the shuttle astronauts and their homebound passengers leave Culbertson and his crewmates to fend for themselves some 240 miles (384 kilometers) above the planet.
"I think one of the toughest things for us is that we're going to have to say goodbye to these guys when we close the hatch," Horowitz said. "You know, it's going to be a little tough to leave them up there because they've got a long road ahead of them."
The Expedition Three crew is due to return to Earth Dec. 9 aboard shuttle Endeavour.
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