Written by Derek Kessler on
Thursday, 25 October 2007
At 10:39 AM EDT today the hatches between the Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station were opened, completing docking between the two spacecraft. After spending two days chasing the ISS while in orbit, Discovery commenced docking procedures at 8:40 this morning while cruising over the Pacific Ocean. Commanded by Pam Melroy, Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday morning for a 14 day mission to continue construction of the ISS. Onboard is the Italian-built Harmony Node, a critical component for expanding the station.
The ISS and Discovery will spend ten days docked and complete five space walks to install Harmony. Before they can, a massive solar panel tower weighing 17.5 tons will have to be moved (with the assistance of the shuttle's robotic arm). The two crews will also perform a swap, trading five month ISS resident Clayton Anderson for new arrival Daniel Tani, both US astronauts.
Before the shuttle docked, Melroy maneuvered it through a slow orbital backflip in full view of the station, some 600 feet below. The station crew snapped several high resolution pictures of the shuttle's heat sheild, which will be combined with laser scans taken by the shuttle crew yesterday to analyze the fragile sheild for any damage that may have occurred during liftoff. While the laser scans did not reveal any, NASA engineers will still scrutinze the results.
At 10:39 AM EDT today the hatches between the Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station were opened, completing docking between the two spacecraft. After spending two days chasing the ISS while in orbit, Discovery commenced docking procedures at 8:40 this morning while cruising over the Pacific Ocean. Commanded by Pam Melroy, Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday morning for a 14 day mission to continue construction of the ISS. Onboard is the Italian-built Harmony Node, a critical component for expanding the station.
