Posted on 09/07/2006 6:56:16 PM PDT by KevinDavis
I worked for NASA at both the Cape and at JPL designing, building, testing, and flying interplanetaries. Later I worked on Space Station at GSFC and JSC. :-)
Currently I am doing government work.
Excellent! :-)
So is Socks C.
Have you run into the little sonofabitch anywhere around the Cape?
spaceflightnow.com
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2006
An initial assessment of the shuttle Atlantis' heat shield gives mission managers "high confidence" the spaceplane completed its climb to space Saturday without any potentially dangerous debris impacts, officials said Sunday.
spaceflightnow.com
1415 GMT (10:15 a.m. EDT)
The truss is up and out of the payload bay now. The arm will be maneuvering the structure over the shuttle wing and then upward to the station's arm.
spaceflightnow.com
1435 GMT (10:35 a.m. EDT)
The truss, riding on the end of Atlantis' robot arm, has arrived in the handoff location for the station's arm to grab it.
spaceflightnow.com
1448 GMT (10:48 a.m. EDT)
The space station's arm, operated by Expedition astronaut Jeff Williams and Atlantis astronaut Steve MacLean, is moving forward to capture the truss's second grapple fixture. Once the station arm has a firm lock on the truss, the shuttle's arm can let go.
spaceflightnow.com
1452 GMT (10:52 a.m. EDT)
Station's Canadarm2 has grappled the Port 3/Port 4 truss.
spaceflightnow.com
1455 GMT (10:55 a.m. EDT)
Steve MacLean, from the robotics work station inside the Destiny lab module, just radioed to Atlantis' flight deck that Dan Burbank can release the shuttle arm from the truss and back the crane away.
spaceflightnow.com
1503 GMT (11:03 a.m. EDT)
The handoff has been accomplished. Atlantis' 50-foot robot arm has released its grip on the truss, leaving the $372 million structure in the hand of the station's arm for installation tomorrow. The truss will remain secured on the station arm overnight.
spaceflightnow.com
1620 GMT (12:20 p.m. EDT)
With only an inch or so of clearance, astronauts Dan Burbank and Chris Ferguson, operating the shuttle Atlantis' 50-foot-long robot arm, carefully lifted a 35,000-pound solar array truss from the orbiter's cargo bay today, maneuvered it safely past the ship's heat shield inspection boom and out over the shuttle's left wing.
Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean, operating the space station's more massive Canadarm 2 from inside the Destiny laboratory module, then grappled the massive payload in a high-flying handoff, setting the stage for attachment to the station's unfinished solar array truss Tuesday.
"There you have it, the great Canadian handshake," MacLean called. Both robot arms were built in Canada and both were critical to today's operation.
spaceflightnow.com
1930 GMT (3:30 p.m. EDT)
Atlantis astronauts Joe Tanner and Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper are "camping out" in the space station's Quest airlock module to prepare for their spacewalk tomorrow. This is a new procedure that will help spacewalkers get ready for excursions outside the station.
Tanner explains the campout in this pre-launch interview:
"Before any EVA, because we go from a pressure of in the station 14.7 psi, which is the same atmospheric pressure at sea level here, we need to scrub as much of the nitrogen out of our bloods as we can before we go down to a suit pressure of about 4.3 psi, 100 percent oxygen. There are a number of ways to do that. We have done it by breathing 100 percent oxygen for four hours in the suit; that takes a lot of time. We also have a protocol referred to as the exercise protocol that accelerates this denitrogenation process by use of exercise, and that is a bit cumbersome on the crew and the ground to monitor the protocol. And you were exercising a little bit before you go out and do more exercise, so we wanted to try a protocol that has been around for quite a while but never really used referred to as campout.
"It's a modification of the type of protocol we've used on the shuttle for years, where we depress the shuttle down to 10.2 psi from 14.7 and leave the crew at that pressure for up to days. In the one case of the Hubble missions, they stayed at 10.2 the whole mission until landing. That reduced pressure helps purge some of the nitrogen without any extra effort other than just your normal breathing and sleeping activities.
"So we are going to try this new protocol, and for each EVA the EVA crew will camp out, if you will, in the station airlock and depress the airlock only -- you cannot depress the entire station to 10.2; it's not certified to go to that pressure -- but you can depress the airlock down to that pressure, and the crew sleeps overnight. As long as you're in the airlock at 10.2 for eight hours and 40 minutes, I believe the number is, then you have met the requirement to, to be at that lower pressure long enough to purge nitrogen.
"Now, that's the upside. The downside is that you probably have to go to the bathroom in the morning, and so we will do what we refer to as a hygiene break. For that break you must put on an oxygen mask. We repressurize the station airlock so that we can open the hatch, and then while wearing this oxygen mask, you go to the bathroom and come back in and the total amount on the mask is 70 minutes, I believe.
"Once you get back in the airlock, depress it again down to, to 10.2, and if you've achieved your 70 minutes on the mask. Then you can take the mask off and do a normal suit-up, just like you would if it was a, a shuttle 10.2 protocol. We do this primarily to save time in the day. We think we can get out the door and start the EVA at least an hour sooner than we could on the exercise protocol, a couple of hours sooner than the four-hour-in-suit protocol.
"EVA day is a hugely long day: it's like getting up at six in the morning and, and doing all the activities that you need to do to get ready to go to work, but you don't go to work until noon, and then, you work, work until about seven in the evening, and then have another couple of hours of activities to, to finish up from what you did at work before you can relax and go to bed, so that's a very long day. We are trying to shorten the morning time a little bit, get out to work sooner, and give ourselves a little bit more leeway on the back side of that day for things that might go wrong or other activities that we want to try to get done early."
spaceflightnow.com
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2006
High-resolution photographs of the shuttle Atlantis' underbelly shot today during final approach to the international space station show the orbiter's heat shield tiles are in good shape with no obvious signs of damage.
Agency engineers decided late today that additional heat shield inspections, a move that would have triggered a one-day mission extension, were not required.
2230 GMT (6:30 p.m. EDT)
A gallery of images from this morning's unberthing of the solar array truss from the shuttle's payload bay is available here.
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts115/060911truss/trussgallery.html
Thanks...I stayed up late for the docking and missed everything that happened afterwards. I really like watching the rendevous pitch maneuver.
0835 GMT (4:35 a.m. EDT)
At 4:35 a.m. EDT, the third of four electrically driven bolts was tightened to connect the Port 3/Port 4 truss to the space station. That completes the minimum required mating of the truss and gives the OK for the crew to press forward with today's planned spacewalk. Joe Tanner and Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper are suited up in the airlock and set to begin the EVA.
The station has now grown from 432,000 pounds in mass to 467,000 pounds. This is the first large expansion of the complex since November 2002, just before the Columbia accident suspended station construction.
spaceflightnow.com
1418 GMT (10:18 a.m. EDT)
Tanner has lost a bolt, washer and spring from part of the launch lock he was removing from the rotary joint.
spaceflightnow.com
1537 GMT (11:37 a.m. EDT)
Tanner, having climbed into the airlock, is closing the hatch now.
1525 GMT (11:25 a.m. EDT)
Piper is first to enter the airlock.
1457 GMT (10:57 a.m. EDT)
The get-ahead work is essentially complete now. The spacewalkers are starting the cleanup chores to bring this EVA to a close.
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