STS-100 Day 5 Highlights
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- On Monday, April 23, 2001, 3:00 a.m. CDT, STS-100 MCC Status Report # 8
reports:
- The 10 astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space
Station and the docked shuttle Endeavour are beginning a day that will
see the first opening of hatches linking the two
spacecraft. Highlights will include an impressive first step by the
station's new Canadarm2 and the berthing to the station of
Raffaello, the Italian-built logistics module.
- Hatch opening was set for 4 a.m. following a wakeup call from
Mission Control earlier this morning. Judy Collins’ “Both Sides
Now” for Pilot Jeff Ashby started the shuttle crews’ day.
- After transfer of equipment and supplies, the hatches will be closed
again a little after 2 p.m. so that the Shuttle cabin pressure can
once again be lowered to prepare for Tuesday's second
spacewalk. That spacewalk will focus on permanently powering the
station arm and doing further checkouts.
- The 57.7-foot arm was installed and unfolded Sunday during a 7 hour,
10 minute spacewalk by Scott Parazynski and Chris Hadfield. They also
installed a UHF antenna on the station's U.S. laboratory
Destiny. It was the 19th spacewalk devoted to ISS assembly and the
63rd in the history of the shuttle program.
- After additional checkouts by Helms and Voss this morning, the arm
will “walk” off the Spacelab Pallet on which it was
launched. Its free end will be attached to a Power and Data Grapple
Fixture on Destiny, becoming the arm's base. That first step,
beginning a little after 5 a.m., will cover just over 24
feet. Wednesday morning, the station arm will hand the pallet to the
shuttle arm, to be berthed in Endeavour's cargo bay for return to
Earth.
- Endeavour's own 50-foot robotic arm, operated by Ashby, will
grapple the Raffaello logistics module in the cargo bay and dock it to
the Unity module. Its installation there should be complete about 10
a.m. today. Early Tuesday, the Expedition Two crew will begin
transferring the food, supplies, equipment and two experiment racks
for installation in Destiny from Raffaello to the station.
- Both crews are scheduled to end their day about 6:30
p.m. today. Both spacecraft are in excellent shape orbiting Earth
every 92 minutes at an altitude of 240 statute miles.
- The next status report will be issued this afternoon, or as events
- warrant.
- On Monday, April 23, 2001, 6:00 p.m. CDT, STS-100 MCC Status Report # 9
reports:
- Two elements built by two countries adorn the International Space
Station (ISS) tonight after Endeavour's astronauts and the
Station's Expedition Two crew worked throughout the day to bring
the complex one step closer to an independent robotic capability.
- The new 57-foot long Canadian-built Canadarm2 robot arm took its
first step this morning, “walking off” a pallet mounted at the
top of the Destiny Laboratory to grab onto an electrical grapple
fixture on Destiny capable of providing data, power and telemetry to
the dexterous appendage.
- With Expedition Two Flight Engineer Susan Helms sending commands
from a workstation inside Destiny, the arm began to move off the
pallet at 6:13 a.m. Central time. Three hours later, after an
extensive checkout of all of its new joints, the arm affixed itself to
the Destiny grapple point where it will remain overnight in
preparation for its first active grappling of a payload --- the pallet
on which it was launched --- on Tuesday.
- As Canadarm2 was completing its work for the day, Mission Specialist
Scott Parazynski used Endeavour's slightly smaller robot arm to
latch onto the Italian-built Raffaello cargo module in the
Shuttle's payload bay. Raffaello was lifted out of the bay and was
attached to a docking port on the Station's Unity module at 11:00
a.m., setting the stage for Expedition Commander Yury Usachev, and
Flight Engineers Jim Voss and Helms to begin unloading three tons of
supplies beginning tomorrow. Parazynski was assisted by European Space
Agency astronaut Umberto Guidoni, who will take the lead in assisting
the Station crewmembers in the unloading of Raffaello and the
repacking of discarded items in the module later this week.
- Parazynski and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield
prepared for their second spacewalk of the mission tomorrow by
checking out their tools and spacesuits. They are scheduled to emerge
from Endeavour's airlock around 8 a.m. Tuesday for a planned 6 ½
hour excursion to rewire the base of the newly installed Canadarm2 so
it can operate from its new home on the Destiny Laboratory, to remove
a communications antenna from Unity which is no longer needed and to
mount a spare electrical converter unit on a stowage platform on
Destiny for future Station use.
- Earlier today, Commander Kent Rominger, Pilot Jeff Ashby and Mission
Specialists John Phillips and Yuri Lonchakov of the Russian Aviation
and Space Agency led the way as hatches swung open between Endeavour
and the ISS at 4:25 a.m., allowing the ten crewmembers to greet one
another for the first time. Some supplies carried to the Station
aboard Endeavour were transferred throughout the day until the hatches
once again were closed at 2:26 p.m. after 10 hours of joint
operations. The hatch closure enabled the Shuttle's cabin pressure
to be lowered to support tomorrow's spacewalk.
- Near the end of the day, Rominger and Ashby supervised a one-hour
firing of Endeavour's jets to gently raise the orbit of the ISS
about 2 ½ statute miles, from 237.8 statute miles to 240.3 statute
miles. Two more reboosts are planned on Wednesday and Thursday to
leave the Station at the correct altitude for the arrival of a
Russian-commanded “taxi” crew next week delivering a fresh Soyuz
return vehicle to the complex.
- Both crews are scheduled to end their day just after 6:30 p.m. and
will be awakened early Tuesday morning. Both spacecraft are in
excellent shape orbiting the Earth every 92 minutes.
- The next status report will be issued tomorrow morning after crew
wakeup, or sooner, if events warrant.
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