AP News, December 10th, 2006
The orbiting Discovery crew, en route Sunday to rewire the international space station, first had to make sure the shuttle's heat shield wasn't damaged during liftoff.
The seven astronauts prepared to inspect the wings and nose cap Sunday afternoon for chips or other damage from foam, a procedure made mandatory after the Columbia accident in 2003. Mission specialist Nicholas Patrick will maneuver the shuttle's 50-foot robotic arm and similarly long boom with cameras and sensors.
The Columbia disintegrated while re-entering the atmosphere, killing the crew members.
Preliminary radar reports from Discovery's launch showed nothing of concern, NASA spokesman Kyle Herring said.
Discovery fired its engines Sunday to raise its altitude to 216 miles above Earth, nearly level with the space station, where it will dock Monday afternoon.
Then the real work begins.
The first spacewalk on the 12-day mission will involve installing a new addition to the space station, and the second and third will be for rewiring the station from its temporary power system to the permanent one. The solar power arrays that were brought up during the last mission will be used for the first time after that reconfiguration is complete.
During its 12-day mission, Discovery's crew will also deliver an $11 million addition to the space lab and bring home one of the space station's three crew members, German astronaut Thomas Reiter of the European Space Agency. American astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams will replace him, staying for six months.
Commander Mark Polansky and Robert Curbeam will spacewalk three times. Other crew members are pilot William Oefelein, and mission specialists Patrick, Williams, Joan Higginbotham and the European Space Agency's Christer Fuglesang, the first Swede in space.
Five of Discovery's astronauts, including Patrick, are first-timers to space.
They woke up on their first morning in zero gravity to a transmission from Houston of The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun," an allusion by flight control to how the shuttle lit up the nighttime sky during its ascent Saturday.
"Good morning, Discovery. We especially want to thank you for the burst of sunshine you brought into our lives last night. It was an awesome launch," Shannon Lucid from Mission Control radioed up to the crew.
"It was pretty great for all of us, too," Polansky responded.
NASA had required daytime launches for the first three flights after Columbia, but now feels comfortable with the improvements made since then.
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On the Net:
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