CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Shuttle Atlantis closed in on the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday, the first full day in orbit for the six-member crew, all of whom are reported to be doing well.
The day was filled with checks of the equipment and spacesuits that will be needed later in the mission with the installation of a $390 million truss segment to another truss already attached to the orbiting outpost.
Atlantis' maneuvering engines and steering thrusters were fired several times Tuesday to refine the shuttle's orbit so it will be in the correct position to make a slow approach to the ISS Wednesday. It is scheduled to dock with the station at 11:29 a.m. EDT (1529 GMT).
Two hours later the hatches between the two ships are to be opened and all nine humans now in space will meet together in a brief welcoming ceremony and security briefing.
The Expedition Five crew now onboard the station spent Tuesday the same way many Earthlings do when expecting company: cleaning up and making the place look nice.
Following a flawless launch from the Kennedy Space Center on Monday, Atlantis' five astronauts and one cosmonaut spent a couple of hours setting up shop for their planned 11-day stay in space and then went to bed.
Before turning in, the crew turned on their in-cabin television camera and in a relatively rare happening all six humans were seen on Atlantis' flight deck, smiling, laughing and appearing very healthy.
"Everybody's feeling fantastically well and we're all having so much fun. We all feel great. It's really wonderful to be back in magic land again," said Atlantis pilot Pam Melroy, who is making her second spaceflight.
Mission commentator Kelly Humphries noted that on the first day of shuttle missions at least one or two crewmembers suffer through a few hours of space motion sickness, but in this case all six flyers apparently avoided the malady.
Also beamed to Earth late Monday was videotape of the climb to orbit as seen from inside Atlantis' cockpit. Narrating the tape, rookie mission specialists Piers Sellers and Sandy Magnus talked about the incredible ride up hill.
"The whole business of getting off the ground was a lot more violent, I think, than either of us thought," Sellers said. "The sky was turning colors, going from blue to kind of a deep dark blue, and slowing changing to black."
The pair noted on the videotape when they passed an altitude of 50 miles (80 kilometers), the official boundary of space.
"The 50-mile point is the place where we became official astronauts," Magnus said. "We kind of looked at each other and went, 'Wow! That's pretty cool.'"
"It was unbelievable," Sellers added. "You could really feel yourself hurtling through the air and then through space, faster and faster and faster. And it was quite extraordinary."
Back at the launch site, officials reported that pad 39B suffered no unusual damage from Atlantis' blast off on Monday. The shuttle's twin solid rocket boosters were recovered from their splashdown point in the Atlantic Ocean and are now in tow on their way to Port Canaveral.
The solid rocket booster recovery ships are due at the port about 12:30 p.m. EDT (1630 GMT), said KSC spokesman George Diller.
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