STS-111 MISSION ARCHIVE (FINAL) Updated: 06/19/02 Space station assembly mission 8A By William Harwood CBS News/Kennedy Space Center The following copy originally was posted on the Current Mission space page at http://cbsnews.com/network/news/space/current.html. Comments, suggestions and corrections welcome! TABLE OF CONTENTS -Endeavour set for station resupply, crew rotation flight (05/13/02) -Tricky valve repair assessed; if 'no joy,' rollback possible (05/24/02) -Engineers work on valve replacement (05/25/02) -Countdown begins; weather 60 percent 'no go' (05/28/02) -Shuttle mission overview (05/28/02) -Weather 'iffy' for Thursday launch (05/29/02) -Afternoon storms force launch delay (05/30/02) -NASA orders additional delay due to weather (05/31/02) -Launch delayed because of nitrogen valve problem (06/01/02) -Regulator repair work forces additional delay (06/03/02) -N2 regulator replaced; Endeavour cleared for June 5 launch (06/04/02) -Endeavour rockets into orbit (06/05/02) -Astronauts spend busy first day in space (06/06/02) -Endeavour docks with space station (06/07/02) -Station gyro fails; Leonardo attached (06/08/02) -Spacewalk preps robot arm base for attachment (06/09/02) -MBS temporarily mounted on truss cart (06/10/02) -MBS permanentaly attached during second spacewalk (06/11/02) -Crew news conference (06/12/02) -Spacewalkers replace wrist joint on station arm (06/13/02) -Leonardo cargo module reberthed; CBS Radio interview (06/14/02) -Shuttle undocks from space station (06/15/02) -Astronauts ready shuttle for landing (06/16/02) -Landing delayed 24 hours by bad weather (06/17/02) -Second straight landing delay (06/18/02) -Endeavour diverted to California touchdown (06/19/02) =================================================================== Endeavour set for station resupply, crew rotation flight (05/13/02) NASA is gearing up to launch the shuttle Endeavour on a flight to the international space station May 30. The primary goals of the 110th shuttle mission are to ferry a fresh crew to the lab complex; to bring the station's current crew back to Earth after six months in space; and to install a new wrist-roll joint on the lab's Canadian-built space crane. On board for launch will be commander Kenneth Cockrell, pilot Paul Lockhart, French astronaut Philippe Perrin, Franklin Chang-Diaz and the space station's fifth full-time crew, commander Valeri Korzun, Peggy Whitson and Sergei Treschev. Perrin and Chang-Diaz, who will become the second person in space history to make seven flights, plan to carry out three spacewalks. The primary goals of the excursions are to install the robot arm's new wrist-roll joint and to attach a mounting platform to the station's external rail car to permit future assembly crews to move the robot arm to various work sites along the solar array truss. Under a post Sept. 11 security policy, NASA will not announce Endeavour's exact launch time until the day before liftoff. Until then, agency officials will only say the shuttle is scheduled for take off sometime between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. on May 30. CBS News is honoring NASA's request not to publish estimated launch times generated by satellite tracking software. As a result, the flight plan posted below is targeted for the opening of the shuttle's four-hour launch period, not its actual or estimated takeoff time. The flight plan will be updated as soon as NASA announces the official launch time. =================================================================== Tricky valve repair assessed; if 'no joy,' rollback possible (05/24/02) Engineers with Hamilton Sundstrand plan to climb into the shuttle Endeavour's main engine compartment tonight to assess the feasibility of replacing one or more valves associated with one of the ship's three hydraulic system water spray boilers. At least one valve is leaking water needed to cool auxiliary power unit No. 3 during launch and entry. If the valve or valves in question can be replaced at the pad with the shuttle in a vertical orientation, launch on a space station crew rotation flight should remain on track for May 30. But if engineers cannot gain access - and water spray boiler No. 3 is the most inaccessible of the three aboard Endeavour - engineers could be forced to haul the shuttle back to its processing hangar, delaying launch to mid June or later. A NASA spokesman at the Kennedy Space Center said the valves in question have never been replaced at the pad with the shuttle in a vertical orientation and it's not clear yet whether engineers can gain the access they need to make repairs. If they are able to reach the valves, the replacement work will begin immediately. If not, a decision is expected Saturday on hauling Endeavour back to its hangar. This status report will be updated as soon as a decision, one way or the other, is made. =================================================================== Engineers work on valve replacement (05/25/02) Engineers are working today at pad 39A to replace a leaking valve associated with a water spray boiler needed to cool one of the shuttle Endeavour's three hydraulic power units. As of 8 a.m. today, the replacement work was in progress and expected to take from six to eight hours to complete. With a positive prognosis, engineers are confident Endeavour's aft engine compartment will be closed out for flight in time for the start of the shuttle's countdown Monday for a launch attempt Thursday on a space station crew rotation mission. Friday afternoon, engineers were concerned they might not be able to gain access to the valve in question. Water spray boiler No. 3 is the most inaccessible of the trio aboard Endeavour and such work has never before been done with the shuttle in a vertical orientation. That raised the prospect of a possible rollback to the shuttle's processing hangar and a lengthy launch delay. But after an overnight assessment by engineers with the spray boiler's vendor, Hamilton Sundstrand, it was determined the valve could be replaced at the pad with no impact on launch. The leaking valve was removed earlier today and work to install the replacement is underway. Endeavour is scheduled for launch sometime between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Thursday. The exact launch time will be revealed 24 hours before liftoff. =================================================================== Countdown begins; weather 60 percent 'no go' (05/28/02) The shuttle Endeavour's countdown began ticking late Monday night for launch Thursday on a space station crew rotation and robot arm repair mission. Under a post Sept. 11 security policy, the shuttle's exact launch time will not be released until Wednesday. Until then, NASA will only say liftoff is scheduled sometime between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. There are no technical problems at pad 39A, but forecasters say there's a 60 percent chance of a launch delay because of thundershowers within 20 nautical miles during the shuttle's actual five-minute launch window. Should launch slip to Friday, the outlook calls for a 70 percent chance of a delay due to the same weather system. Saturday's odds also are 70 percent "go." Conditions are expected to improve early next week. NASA test director Steve Altemus said the launch team's strategy going into the STS-111 campaign is to make two back-to-back attempts Thursday and Friday, if necessary, and then to stand down for two days to top of the shuttle's on-board supplies of liquid oxygen and hydrogen. Two more launch attempts then could be made Monday and Tuesday, giving the crew four chances in six days to get off the ground. Endeavour's crew, meanwhile, flew to the Kennedy Space Center Monday to make final preparations for launch, weather permitting. "Things are becoming more and more real every day and I'm looking forward to the flight," said rookie French flier Philippe Perrin. "I'm sure it's going to be extremely exciting." Joining Perrin for the 110th shuttle mission is commander Kenneth Cockrell, pilot Paul Lockhart, Franklin Chang-Diaz and the next full-time space station crew, Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, Peggy Whitson and Sergei Treschev. Mir-veteran Korzun and his two rookie crewmates will replace Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz, who were launched to the station Dec. 5. They will return to Earth aboard Endeavour on June 11, completing a 187-day 20-or-so-hour flight just a few hours shy of the 188.4-day U.S. endurance record set by Shannon Lucid during a flight aboard the Mir space station in 1996. The Expedition 4 crew originally planned to return to Earth early this month, but Endeavour's mission was delayed several weeks when NASA managers decided to add a third spacewalk to replace a faulty joint in the space station's $600 million Canadarm2 space crane. The shuttle crew also will deliver critical supplies, fresh food, clothing, scientific equipment and a sophisticated mounting platform that will allow a compact rail car on the lab's unfinished solar power truss to carry Canadarm2 to various worksites. A detailed mission overview will be posted here later today. A detailed flight plan based on the shuttle's actual launch time, along with the NASA television schedule, will be posted Wednesday, after the official launch time is announced. In the meantime, the flight plan is posted below, targeted on the opening of the shuttle's four-hour launch period. As such, readers should keep in mind the events listed in the flight plan could be off by as much as four hours. =================================================================== Shuttle mission overview (05/28/02) By WILLIAM HARWOOD Two spacewalking surgeons will operate on the international space station's $600 million robot arm next week during an orbital house call by the shuttle Endeavour's crew, bolting on a replacement joint to fix what amounts to a broken wrist. The primary goal of Endeavour's mission, scheduled for launch Thursday, is to ferry a fresh three-person crew to the international outpost - the fifth set of full-time residents since permanent occupation began in November 2000 - and to deliver science equipment, fresh food, water and other supplies. Endeavour also is carrying up a critical robot arm anchor platform that will be bolted to the top of a compact rail car installed during the last station assembly mission in April. The rail car, in turn, is attached to the central element of a huge truss that eventually will stretch the length of a football field and carry the solar arrays and ammonia coolant lines and radiators needed to keep the station electrically alive and prevent overheating. Only the central element of the truss currently is in place, bolted to the top of the U.S. laboratory module, Destiny. The Canadarm2 space crane was designed to latch onto the anchor platform so it can move along the rails to attach additional truss elements. Eight more truss sections are scheduled for installation this year and next, and all require a healthy robot arm. "The mobile base is going to allow us to transport, move the arm around. It gives us a mobile platform for the arm," said station astronaut Peggy Whitson, a member of the lab's next full-time crew. "That's going to be absolutely critical for the continued assembly of the station. Without our ability to have the mobile base sitting on top of the transporter, we would not be able to complete that assembly." But NASA has a problem. Shortly after the space station remote manipulator system - SSRMS - robotic crane was installed last year, engineers discovered a subtle electronic glitch in the redundant circuitry used to control the movement of the arm's wrist-roll joint. For redundancy, independent electronic control systems are built into each of the arm's seven joints. In one of the two systems that can be used to control the wrist-roll joint, a malfunction can occur that prevents the release of brakes locking the joint in one position. That, in turn, can trigger an automatic shutdown, preventing controllers from using the arm even with the healthy avionics "string." After intensive troubleshooting, Canadian software engineers developed a computer programming patch that forces the arm's main computer to ignore the problem in the wrist-roll joint and not to order a shutdown before switching to the healthy avionics string. Before the most recent shuttle-station assembly mission, another patch was put in place that essentially tells the arm's computer to ignore the joint entirely when working through the faulty avionics string. The wrist-roll joint works normally with the other control system, but NASA managers want full redundancy to protect against problems down the road. As it now stands, a failure in the healthy control system could shut the arm down, interrupting assembly operations. "Certainly for normal operations, for any of the build outboard of where we are now, we need a fully functional arm," said shuttle flight director Paul Hill. "The arm we have now is fully functional on (one) string but if we fail this string, that takes us down to either one degraded string or, depending on the failure, two degraded strings." And so, on March 20, station managers decided to add a third spacewalk to Endeavour's mission so French astronaut Philippe Perrin and Franklin Chang-Diaz could replace the faulty wrist-roll joint. Launch was delayed a month to give engineers time to develop a payload bay mounting fixture for the replacement joint and to give the spacewalkers additional time to train. That work is now complete, and Endeavour's crew is ready for flight. "We've got one of those missions that has almost got too much in it to get done," said shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell. "We're looking forward to a very jam-packed timeline when we get on orbit. Aside from the normal excitement of launch, landing, docking and undocking, we've got a tremendous amount of work to do while we're docked to the international space station." "We've got three EVAs to pull off, one of which we've only been training for the last month, which is the launch on need repair of the big arm on space station, and two other previously planned assembly EVAs," he said. "We have a crew exchange ... and then we have a very full (cargo canister) with hopes of filling it to 90 percent capacity for return. So we have a full plate in front of us." Endeavour is scheduled for launch May 30 from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Cockrell, pilot Paul Lockhart, Perrin and Chang-Diaz, acting as the shuttle's flight engineer, will be seated on the upper deck of the cockpit. Cockrell is known by his nickname "Taco" while Lockhart, a fellow University of Texas graduate, is known as "Paco." The space station's next crew - Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, Whitson and Sergei Treschev - will make the climb into orbit seated on Endeavour's lower deck. Only three of the shuttle's seven crew members are spaceflight veterans. Cockrell is making his fifth flight, Korzun his second and Costa Rica-born Chang-Diaz his seventh, tying a record set by astronaut Jerry Ross on the most recent shuttle mission in April. "Franklin is well known, well respected for his consummate abilities and consummate knowledge of the space shuttle and systems," Cockrell said. "So he's the perfect guy to have as the flight engineer. He knows my job, he knows Paco's job and he backs us up, directs us and guides us in every way having to do with the shuttle flying. "He's also a guy who takes to space very well by all accounts. He doesn't get sick and he's a natural at maneuvering around in zero G. And he puts together pretty good meals! ... So on just about every front having to do with living life on the space shuttle, Franklin's going to be a great guy to have on the crew." For his part, Chang-Diaz, a nuclear physicist who is helping develop an innovative interplanetary propulsion system when he's not training for a shuttle mission, is typically modest about his achievements. "Being an astronaut has been a dream of my life, ever since I was very little," he said. "I tried to make that dream come true, obviously successfully, and I'm hoping that perhaps this is in the minds of many other children as we open up space for human exploration, that many other children all over the world will have the opportunity to dream about it and someday realize those dreams." CATCHING UP WITH THE SPACE STATION Endeavour's launching, like all flights to the space station, is timed to coincide with the moment Earth's rotation carries the launch pad into the plane of the station's orbit. That plane is tilted 51.6 degrees to Earth's equator. The shuttle has enough power to launch five minutes to either side of the moment the pad is "in plane" with the station. For technical reasons, NASA only uses five minutes of that 10-minute launch window, taking off when the pad is essentially directly in the plane of the station's orbit. "You launch into an orbit that is lined up with the space station exactly," Cockrell said in a NASA interview. "If you don't, the mission is blown. Once you get into orbit you cannot change the orbit from side to side." Altitude, however, is another matter and the lower the altitude, the higher the spacecraft's velocity. Endeavour will launch into the station's plane but orbit at an initially much lower altitude. "Generally speaking, we'll be several thousand miles behind the space station," Cockrell said. "It really doesn't matter where it is on its orbit so long as we're under the track that it's on. We will stay down at a lower altitude, about 120 miles. The fact that we're at a lower altitude makes us go around the Earth faster. "So, in a matter of a day-and-a-half, we will catch up with the space station," he said. "And, as we start to catch up, we'll gradually raise our altitude up closer to the space station's altitude so that our catch-up rate slows down. It becomes more gradual." The terminal rendezvous phase will begin two days after launch with the shuttle trailing the station by about 9.2 statute miles. From there, Cockrell and Lockhart will oversee a series of computer-controlled rocket firings designed to place the shuttle at a point 600 feet or so directly below the space station. At about that point, Cockrell will take over manual control and pilot Endeavour in a slow loop up to a point 300 to 400 feet directly in front of the lab complex as both spacecraft race through space at five miles per second. "We're going to come underneath it," Cockrell said. "We just tell the autopilot to start tilting the tail towards the Earth and then we scoot it along so that, as it tilts toward the Earth, we end up in front of the space station. It's kind of quasi-magic, but it works. "And then, while we're up here in front of the space station, the computer or the autopilot just holds the tail pointed straight at the Earth, and then we just guide it left, right, and in and out, down towards the station." The station will be oriented with its long axis in the direction of travel. A pressurized mating adapter mounted on the forward end of the Destiny laboratory module will face Endeavour. Destiny, in turn, is attached to the U.S. Unity module, a multi-hatch gateway linking the lab to the rest of the station. Directly across Unity from Destiny is a pressurized mating adapter leading into the Russian Zarya propulsion and cargo module. Zarya, in turn, is attached to the Russian Zvezda command module at the aft end of the station's long axis. A Progress supply ship currently is docked to Zvezda's aft port while the on-board crew's Soyuz lifeboat is docked to a downward-facing port on the Russian-built, NASA-financed Zarya module. Another Russian docking port in a module attached to Zvezda is currently vacant. Extending 90 feet up from the Unity module's zenith hatch is the Z1 truss and P6 solar array, which provides the bulk of the station's current power. The P6 array ultimately will be repositioned at the end of the station's main truss, the first element of which was installed during the most recent station assembly mission in April. The station's Quest airlock module, which will be used for all three of the upcoming STS-111 spacewalks, is attached to Unity's right-side, or starboard, hatch. Positioned directly in front of the station's long axis, Cockrell will manually guide Endeavour in so the docking system in the shuttle's cargo bay can mate with its counterpart on the pressurized mating adapter, or PMA. After hooks and latches engage, the two spacecraft will be locked together. "It's really a fun piloting task," Cockrell said. "It's like driving a ship. You make very small inputs that take a long time to occur; but once they occur, they're very hard to stop. So it's something you need to do very precisely and it takes a lot of practice. "So we go in very slowly and gradually, we slow down at about 30 feet away from the docking port and just look through a zoomed-in camera at the target. The target has a little set of alignment guides on it and we make sure that we're all lined up, that the two vehicles are exactly in plane. "And then, from 30 feet in, we just hold a steady rate and we crash into the station," he joked. "That's a very slow crash. It's one-tenth of a foot per second. It's as slow as a snail would crawl." After leak checks, hatches between the two spacecraft will be opened and station commander Yuri Onufrienko and his two Expedition 4 crewmates, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz, will welcome the shuttle/Expedition 5 crews on board. After a safety briefing, the combined crews will get down to work. But along the way, the shuttle astronauts plan to keep the station crews entertained. "We have planned a few special things," Cockrell said. "The shuttle food menu has really grown in its size and variety in the past few years. I think it's been driven to give the expedition crews a bigger variety. So we found a way to have a Mexican day, an Asian day, a surf-and-turf day and a cajun day within the boundaries of the shuttle food menu. "It's always good to come together as a crew of 10 and have a meal together. It really serves to recharge the batteries." Given the combined crew's busy flight plan, they'll need it. EXPEDITION 5 CREW LOOKING FORWARD TO BUSY STAY IN SPACE The international space station has been continuously staffed since Nov. 2, 2000, when Expedition 1 commander William Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev and Yury Gidzenko arrived aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Since then, U.S. and Russian crew members have logged more than 570 days in orbit aboard the lab complex. Here's the breakdown: CREW......DDD/HH:MM:SS.....LAUNCH DATE ISS-1.....136/16:10:20.....10/31/00 ISS-2.....148/16:43:00.....03/08/01 ISS-3.....117/02:56:00.....08/10/01 ISS-4.....173.5 days*......12/05/01 *As of 1:30 p.m. EDT, May 28, 2002 The Expedition 4 crew - Onufrienko, Bursch and Walz - was launched to the station Dec. 5, 2001. Assuming an on-time landing aboard Endeavour June 11, they will have logged 187 days and 19-some-odd hours in space, just a few hours shy of Shannon Lucid's U.S. endurance mark of 188.4 days, a record set in 1996 aboard the Russian Mir space station. During the course of their time in space, Onufrienko, Bursch and Walz have accepted delivery of an automated Progress supply ship; worked with the crew of the shuttle Atlantis in early April to attach the central element of the station's solar power truss; and accepted delivery of a fresh Soyuz lifeboat from a visiting crew that included Mark Shuttleworth, the second space tourist to pay his way into orbit. Within a few hours of Endeavour's docking, the Expedition 5 crew will begin moving into the station, transferring their custom-fitted Soyuz seat liners and Sokol entry suits from the shuttle to the lab complex. Once the seat liners are in place, and after the Sokol suits are pressure tested, the crew transfer will be complete. That should occur on the second docked day of the mission, but an official change-of-command ceremony will not take place until flight day six. In any case, Korzun's crew will begin sleeping aboard the station by the end of the second docked day. Whitson plans to bunk in a sleep station inside the U.S. Destiny module while Korzun and Treschev will occupy two staterooms in the Zvezda command module at the other end of the station. It is the first station crew to have more rookies than veterans. "Sergei and Peggy, they are unflown astronauts but they have had very nice training and they're ready for flight," said Korzun. "I feel it's a little bit difficult for an unflown cosmonaut and astronaut to imagine the situation on the station. We've had good training on simulators in the laboratory here on the ground, but the real station is not the same as here on the land. This is true. "But I think we have had enough time and the previous crew will familiarize us with situation on the station. We need a short time to understand exactly all configuration of all systems and equipment which is on the station." Such "handover" sessions are scheduled throughout the docked phase of Endeavour's mission to give Onufrienko, Bursch and Walz time to brief their successors on the details of day-to-day life aboard the station. What they will not be able to do is fully prepare Whitson and Treschev for the psychological challenges that await them during a long-duration stay in space, cut off from the support of friends and relatives. "I think probably the most challenging thing after some period of time being in space is just going to be missing the Earth," Whitson said. "I'm an outdoors person, my hobby is working in the yard with my plants so I think I will miss just the planet, being close to the plants and the planet itself. But it's obviously a phenomenal view so that will give me a new perspective from which to look at it. So I'm looking forward to the experience." Korzun agreed "we will miss our friends, land and family." "But especially what Peggy said about her yard, she will think about it every time because on the station, this is just fabric, metal," he said. "During our flight on space station Mir, there was a greenhouse and everybody had a chance to look at these green plants in a greenhouse, it was very nice psychological support. I think we will grow something." Korzun and his crewmates are scheduled to return to Earth Oct. 16 after a 137-day stay in space. And they will be very busy indeed. First, they will assist Endeavour's crew with attachment of the SSRMS mobile base system and monitor the replacement of the arm's wrist-roll joint. Equally important, if not moreso, they will help unload an Italian-built cargo module called Leonardo that is loaded with critical supplies and equipment. Leonardo will make the trip into orbit mounted in the rear of Endeavour's cargo bay. The day after docking, Cockrell will use the shuttle's robot arm to attach it to the Unity module's downward facing port. The $150 million Leonardo, also known as a multi-purpose logistics module, is more fully loaded than any of the four previous MPLM flights to the station. Fifteen of 16 internal stowage racks are occupied with supplies, food, clothing, spare parts, new computers and other gear. Leonardo also is carrying a science rack provided by the European Space Agency called the Microgravity Science Glovebox. The glovebox is a sealed enclosure with reach-in gloves that gives station scientists an isolated environment in which to safely manipulate fluids, flames and other toxic materials. Here's a description from NASA's press kit: "The glovebox, designed to stay in the Destiny laboratory for 10 years, will support the first two space station materials science experiments, also being delivered on STS-111. These experiments will study materials processes similar to those used to make semiconductors for electronic devices and components for jet engines. In exchange for building the glovebox, the European Space Agency will be able to perform experiments inside Destiny until that agencyÕs space station laboratory Ð the Columbus Orbital Facility Ð is attached to the station in a couple of years. "The Microgravity Science Glovebox provides vacuum, venting and gaseous nitrogen, as well as power and data interfaces for experiments. The MSG occupies an entire rack inside the Destiny lab and is more than twice as large as gloveboxes flown previously on the space shuttle. This enables the MSG to hold experiments about the size of an airline carry-on bag." Some 1,500 pounds of science gear will be unloaded during Endeavour's visit, along with 2,500 pounds of science support hardware. All told, Leonardo is carrying some 5,600 pounds of cargo and supplies to the station. Getting the module unloaded will be difficult enough. But the astronauts and cosmonauts also must repack it with no-longer-needed equipment, trash, packing foam and other gear that must be returned to Earth. "We have a very full MPLM, with 15 of the 16 rack spots taken up and with hopes of filling it to 90 percent capacity for return, which will unload sort of a backlog of excess supplies and equipment on board space station that really needs to be removed," Cockrell said. "So we have a full plate in front of us." Mike Rodriggs, launch package manager for STS-111, described loading Leonardo for return to Earth as part of "doing a spring cleaning, basically taking an assessment of all the items on board that really don't need to be there, they've served their usefulness or they have to come down for refurbishment or whatever. "So we're just compiling them all, finding locations inside the MPLM and just having the crew repack them inside the MPLM," he said. After Endeavour departs, Korzun, Whitson and Treschev will face a busy few weeks stowing the freshly delivered supplies and equipment and preparing for the arrival of another unmanned Progress supply ship at the end of June. Then, on July 22, Korzun and Whitson, wearing Russian spacesuits, plan to carry out a spacewalk to deploy micrometeoroid debris shields on the hull of the Zvezda command module. The debris shields will be delivered by Endeavour's crew and temporarily mounted on the station's hull during the first of that mission's three planned spacewalks. Korzun and Treschev plan another spacewalk Aug. 1 to install handrails, ham radio antennas and to replace sample plates used to expose a variety a materials to the space environment for extended periods. Korzun and company will welcome another shuttle crew to the station in late August and participate in installation of the second solar array truss segment. Another Progress supply ship will arrive around Sept. 10 and the crew will return to Earth around Oct. 14 after assisting in the installation of a third truss element. "We're really looking forward to our mission," Whitson said. "When we go up on STS-111, we'll be installing the mobile base system (and) we have a lot of responsibilities, all three of us, in emptying out the MPLM, which is going to carry up much of our logistics, not only for our expedition but for Expedition 6 as well. So we've got a lot to do in a very short period of time." In between shuttle visits, "we'll also be doing a number of other tasks," Whitson said. "Valeri and I will be doing one EVA out of the docking compartment and then Sergei and Valeri will do another EVA. Then, of course, we've got a lot of science to entertain us along the way." In fact, mission planners have budgeted 233 hours of in-flight crew time to carry out experiments for 25 scientific investigations. Much more research time will be logged by scientists on the ground working by remote control. "Language is probably the hardest thing I've had to do in preparation for this flight, I'm not a natural at learning a language," Whitson said, reflecting on the challenges she expects. "I've come a long ways and I think the three of us communicate pretty well. We end up mixing and matching languages sometimes in order to communicate more effectively. Valeri's English is very good and Sergei has come a long way. "I think we've trained well enough and long enough together that I don't anticipate we'll have any problems. We have a good mix of personalities. Valeri's pretty outgoing and quite the joke teller and story teller, so he entertains us quite a bit. Sergei and I, we can add our own entertainment at times, so we're looking forward to working together." MOUNTING PLATFORM CRITICAL TO ROBOT ARM, FUTURE STATION ASSEMBLY To provide the electrical power the station needs for its on-board systems and science hardware, engineers designed a giant truss that attaches to the top of the Destiny laboratory module and extends to either side of the station like huge wings. At each end of the truss, two giant sets of solar arrays will track the sun and deliver electrical power to the station through the central element of the truss, known as S-zero. The completed truss also would carry ammonia from inside the station to radiators mounted just inboard of the solar arrays to dissipate the heat generated by the station's electronics. But the truss could not be launched in one piece. Instead, NASA designed a multi-element beam that would be launched in sections and then assembled, one piece at a time, in orbit. The station's robot arm was used to install the first $600 million segment - S-zero - from its current perch on the hull of Destiny. But the arm is not long enough to attach any outboard truss segments. It was designed from the beginning to move along rails attached to the forward side of each major truss segment, carried by a $190 million U.S.-built motorized cart capable of creeping back and forth to various work sites. The robot arm, however, cannot attach itself directly to the railcar, or mobile transporter. It needs an interface that can provide power and route data and video back to operators inside the lab. Enter the Mobile Remote Servicer Base System, or MBS, provided by the Canadian Space Agency. The $254 million MBS is equipped with a pair of computers, weighs 3,300 pounds and measures 18.7 feet by 14.7 feet by 9.5 feet. It provides a latching mechanism to lock down major cargo elements - like truss sections - during movement along the solar array beam; a video system; a latch mechanism for smaller components; and four power, data and grapple fixtures, known as PDGFs, where the robot arm can attach itself. Once attached, the arm can handle components weighing up to 46,000 pounds. The arm currently is anchored to the Earth-facing side of Destiny's hull. After the MBS is installed, a lengthy series of tests is planned to verify its health. Only then, well after the shuttle's departure, will the Expedition 5 crew command the arm's free end to latch onto one of the MBS' power and data grapple fixtures. At that point, the other end of the arm will release the PDGF on Destiny's hull to complete the long-awaited "walk off" onto the mobile transporter. And that will clear the way for the August shuttle mission when the arm will be used to attach the first of the outboard truss sections. THREE SPACEWALKS NEEDED FOR ARM OUTFITTING AND REPAIR The day after Endeavour docks with the space station, Cockrell will attach the Leonardo module to Unity. The day after that, Chang-Diaz and Perrin plan to stage a six-hour spacewalk, the first of three scheduled for Endeavour's mission. This will be the 39th space station assembly spacewalk, the 14th staged from the station itself and the sixth from the U.S. Quest airlock module. Chang-Diaz and Perrin are the 37th and 38th individuals to participate in a station assembly spacewalk. Going into Endeavour's mission, 30 Americans, one Canadian and five Russian cosmonauts had logged 236 hours and 27 minutes of spacewalk time in 38 ISS assembly spacewalks. The first objective for Perrin and Chang-Diaz during the first spacewalk of Endeavour's mission is to attach a PDGF on the P6 solar array truss. The grapple fixture will be needed next year when the array is moved from the upward-facing Z1 truss atop the Unity module and mounted on one end of the main solar array truss currently under construction. Chang-Diaz, wearing a spacesuit with red stripes, will be anchored to the end of the shuttle's 50-foot-long robot arm for most of this first spacewalk while Perrin will be the designated "free floater." The second objective of the spacewalk is to remove the micrometeoroid debris shields form the shuttle's cargo bay and temporarily stow them on the pressurized mating adapter, or PMA, between Unity and the Russian Zarya module. As already mentioned, the debris shields will be deployed in late July by Whitson and Korzun. Designed and built by the Russians, the six debris shields weigh about 100 pounds altogether. They are the first in a set of about two dozen panels that ultimately will be installed on the Zvezda module. When fully deployed, the complete set of panels will reduce the odds of a micrometeoroid strike that could penetrate the module's hull by about 1 percent. While Perrin and Chang-Diaz work to transfer and stow the debris shields, Whitson and Walz, working at a control station inside the Destiny module, will lock the station's robot arm on the MBS, still mounted in the shuttle's cargo bay. The robot arm will provide the "keep-alive" electrical power to operate critical heaters inside the MBS until it can be attached to the mobile transporter the next day. After the arm is attached and keep-alive power is flowing to the MBS, Chang-Diaz and Perrin will remove no-longer-needed thermal covers before re-entering the station's airlock. The station arm then will pull the MBS from the cargo bay and move it to a point about six feet away from the mobile transporter where it will remain overnight. The next day, Walz and Whitson will drive the MBS down onto the mobile transporter cart and engage a mechanical claw that will temporarily lock the platform in place. The day after that, Chang-Diaz and Perrin will stage a second spacewalk to complete the attachment. Scheduled to last six-and-a-half hours, the second EVA is inherently more complex. First, the astronauts will connect four video/data cables and two electrical power lines between the mobile transporter and the MBS. Ground engineers then will power up the MBS through the transporter. Next, Perrin and Chang-Diaz will deploy the MBS cargo grapple fixture and lock it in place before tightening up four main bolts needed to complete the structural attachment of the MBS to the mobile transporter. Once the bolts are torqued down, ground controllers will command the claw that initially held the MBS in place to retract. The astronauts will wrap up the spacewalk by repositioning the MBS camera to its operational location and stowing a set of emergency cables that could be used to provide power to the station's robot arm in the event of a malfunction that stalled the mobile transporter between work site power sockets. The first two spacewalks are considered fairly routine as such things go. But the third excursion, planned for flight day nine, is a more challenging exercise: The removal and replacement of the station arm's wrist-roll joint. For this outing, Perrin will ride on the end of the shuttle robot arm. First, the spacewalkers will put a thermal blanket around the arm's latching end effector - the LEE - the part of the arm that actually locks on to components and grapple fixtures. The arm then will be powered down and Perrin will disconnect the LEE's internal power cable. After loosening six expandible diameter fasteners, or EDFs, holding the 450-pound LEE onto the wrist-roll joint, the spacewalkers will remove the end effector and temporarily stow it on a nearby spacewalker foot restraint. The faulty wrist-roll will be removed in similar fashion, that is, after loosening six EDFs and disconnecting an internal power cable. The replacement joint, which measures about two feet by two feet and weighs some 220 pounds, will be installed by tightening the six EDFs with 25 foot pounds of torque each and making the single required electrical connection. That will clear the way for reattachment of the latching end effector. At that point, ground controllers plan to power the arm back up and begin a series of tests while Perrin and Chang-Diaz move the old wrist-roll joint from its temporary stowage point in the cargo bay to the fixture used to hold the new joint in place during launch. "We in EVA never like to think of our tasks as simple," said lead spacewalk planner Tricia Mack. "But it is a straightforward EVA if all the hardware works correctly. "I guess what's complex about it is the timing," she said. "We will be powering the arm up in between, after we remove the end effector and the wrist roll joint, when the crew's in the bay working and safely away from the work site, we will power the arm up to protect some of the components on it that would normally be without power. So there's a lot of commanding between the ground, the station crew and obviously the EVA crew. I wouldn't say it's simple, but you're right, as long as the hardware works it'll be pretty straightforward." And what will the crew do if one of the expandible diameter bolts fails to collapse when the spacewalkers loosen the central bolt? "We have a long list of contingencies we've trained for," Mack said. "If we have a faulty EDF, we are flying a spare. ... If the clevis and lug interface wouldn't come apart, we have a contingency plan - and I hate saying this because I know the Canadians don't like it - but we have a pry bar on the space station that we maybe could use to give it a little help coming apart." Five of the six EDFs in the latching end effector and the replacement wrist-roll joint must be fully engaged for normal arm operation. "It's going to be a long EVA, because we have a lot of bolts to deal with, unbolting and rebolting them," Perrin said. "But as far as the hardware we need to change, it's pretty simple. "It looks like major surgery because we're going to take the end of the arm out and then swap the joint and then get the LEE back in place and we have to run against the clock and do everything in an orderly and timely fashion," he said. "It's going to be a long EVA, but I think quite simple. ... I feel very confident about the amount of training we've had." RETURNING TO EARTH AFTER SIX MONTHS IN SPACE The day after the final spacewalk, Cockrell is scheduled to remove the Leonardo cargo module from Unity's nadir hatch and re-berth it in Endeavour's cargo bay for return to Earth. Undocking is scheduled for the next day, on flight day 11. "It's basically a reversal of the process of what we did when we docked," Lockhart said in a NASA interview. "You know, when we docked, we came together and then we had to go through a series of steps in order to attach the two pieces together. Well, we've got to reverse that. "There's a series of springs that actually push the orbiter away from the station. And then, I will start to fly the orbiter away from the station. I liken a little bit of this and the rendezvous a little bit to air-to-air refueling in aircraft, which some people may realize we have two vehicles that are moving at a high rate of speed, but their relative velocity is really low. "But it's never stable," he said. "In other words, it's not like this one vehicle is parked and this vehicle is parked. It's always a constant maneuvering between the two. And so, when you dock and when you undock, it's the same thing. You get a separation but immediately, you have orbital mechanics effects start to take effect. ... So I have to keep making inputs in order to maintain the axis that I want to separate on." After backing away to a point about 450 feet directly in front of the station, Lockhart will guide Endeavour through a lap-and-a-quarter fly-around of the station for routine photo documentation. The shuttle crew then will leave the area and the astronauts will prepare for entry on June 11. As with all returning long-duration station crews, Onufrienko, Bursch and Walz will make the trip back to Earth resting on their backs in recumbent seats bolted to the floor of the shuttle's lower deck. Perrin, who made the climb into space seated on Endeavour's upper deck, will be strapped in on the lower deck for entry to assist the station crew, if needed, as they re-adjust to the unfamiliar tug of Earth's gravity. Based on recent experience, however, his help likely won't be necessary. "Our crews are coming down in a lot better shape than we anticipated, maybe better than what they had returned to Earth after the shuttle-Mir missions," Whitson said. "We do think our exercise protocols are working very well, in particular resistive exercise," she added. "I think they've seen less bone loss in those crew members who've been doing more resistive exercise. We have taken the initial steps and we know some of those steps are effective and so I think we will be continuing the exercise program as much as we can feasibly conduct it." =================================================================== Weather 'iffy' for Thursday launch (05/29/02) 09:25 a.m., 05/29/02, Update: Shuttle on track for launch, weather marginal With no technical problems at pad 39A, the shuttle Endeavour's countdown continues to tick smoothly toward launch Thursday on a space station crew rotation mission. But forecasters say the weather outlook hasn't changed and there's still a 60 percent chance of thunderstorms that could force a delay. If you're a person who believes the glass is half full rather than half empty, Endeavour's crew has a reasonable shot at getting off the ground Thursday. But the glass definitely starts getting empty on Friday and Saturday, with the outlook 70 percent "no go" both days. Weather officers say they don't expect much of a break until early next week. But readers should take launch percentages with a grain of salt. As former launch director and weatherman Bob Sieck used to say, it doesn't matter what the forecasters predict, it's 50-50 on launch day. Otherwise, work at pad 39A continues per the countdown. Last night, engineers completed loading liquid hydrogen and oxygen into the shuttle to power its electricity producing fuel cells. The team is currently working through a series of main engine tests and readying pad systems for launch. "We're right on schedule and we're tracking no technical issues," said NASA test director Pete Nickolenko. "All of our flight and ground systems are in great shape, the launch team is focused and ready to go and we're all looking forward to launch on Thursday." Endeavour's actual five-minute launch window will open sometime during a four-hour launch period that begins at 4 p.m. Thursday. The exact launch time, which has been withheld under a post Sept. 11 security policy, will be released later today and posted here shortly thereafter. The flight plan below will be updated at that time to reflect the actual launch time. The NASA television schedule also will be released and it will be posted below as soon as it is made available. In the meantime, the first 1,200 words of a 6,100-word mission overview is posted below. The complete story is available in the CBS News STS-111 Mission Archive. 05:45 p.m., 05/29/02, Update: Official launch time released In keeping with its post Sept. 11 security policy, NASA released the shuttle Endeavour's official launch time today, saying liftoff on a space station crew rotation and robot arm repair mission is targeted for 7:44:26 p.m. Thursday. The launch window will close four minutes and 59 seconds later at 7:49:25 p.m. Shuttle flights to the international space station are timed to coincide with the moment Earth's rotation carries the launch pad into the plane of the station's orbit. The shuttle actually has enough power to launch five minutes to either side of that "in plane" moment. In this case, Endeavour could take off between 7:39:27 p.m. and 7:49:25 p.m. But in reality, NASA gives up the first five minutes of the window and instead targets launch for the moment the pad is directly in plane. For Endeavour's launch, that turns out to be 7:44:26 p.m. This policy improves a crew's chances of reaching an East Coast landing site in the event of multiple main engine failures early in flight that otherwise might require a ditching in the Atlantic Ocean. The STS-111 flight plan, based on the official launch time, is posted below, along with the initial release of the NASA television schedule. =================================================================== Afternoon storms force launch delay (05/30/02) 04:10 p.m., 05/30/02, Update: Astronauts driven to launch pad The shuttle Endeavour's crew was driven to launch pad 39A today around 4 p.m. to begin strapping in for launch. Liftoff remains targeted for 7:44:26 p.m. but forecasters are still concerned about the weather. Conditions at the Kennedy Space Center currently are observed "green," but meteorologists expect thunderstorms to develop later in the day and possible electrically-charged anvil clouds to move into the area. The only question is when. Satellite imagery shows massive storm cells beginning to blossom across western and central Florida. They have not yet reached the Cape, but the tops are clearing blowing toward the east. Endeavour has just five minutes to get of the ground, or launch will be delayed 24 hours. Stay tuned! 10:45 a.m., 05/30/02, Update: Shuttle fueling underway Engineers began pumping a half-million gallons of supercold liquid oxygen and hydrogen rocket fuel into the shuttle Endeavour's external tank at 10:32 a.m. today. The three-hour fueling procedure should be complete by 1:30 p.m. or so, setting the stage for launch on a space station crew rotation mission at 7:44 p.m. There are no technical problems at pad 39A, but forecasters continue to predict a 60 percent chance of a launch delay due to afternoon and evening thunderstorms in the Kennedy Space Center area. Forecasters are hopeful, however, that any storms in the area will dissipate before the opening of the shuttle's five-minute launch window. NASA television coverage is scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m., around the time Endeavour's crew reaches the launch pad for boarding. We will provide updates throughout the day. In the meantime, the NASA television schedule is posted below, along with a detailed flight plan. 06:45 p.m., 05/30/02, Update: Engineers troubleshoot valve problem Shuttle engineers are troubleshooting an apparent problem with a gaseous nitrogen regulator in Endeavour's left-side orbital maneuvering system rocket pod. it's not yet clear is this is a real problem or an instrumentation glitch of some sort. At the same time, the weather appears to be deteriorating. Major thunderstorms have built up to the west of the Kennedy Space Center and electrically active anvil debris clouds are moving toward the launch area. 07:25 p.m., 05/30/02, Update: Shuttle grounded by stormy weather Launch director Michael Leinbach called off today's attempt to launch the shuttle Endeavour on a space station crew rotation mission because of thunderstorms and electrical activity encroaching from the west. Another launch attempt is possible Friday, at 7:21:52 p.m., but forecasters expect even worse conditions, predicting a 70 percent chance of another delay. As of this writing, NASA managers have not said whether another attempt will be made Friday, but the launch team is protectively setting up for a 24-hour recycle. Endeavour's countdown proceeded smoothly throughout the day and commander Kenneth Cockrell and his six crewmates started strapping in around 4:20 p.m. But as the afternoon wore on, storm cells began blossoming across western and central Florida, moving in a generally eastward direction. NASA's flight rules forbid a launch if thunderstorms are within 20 nautical miles of the shuttle's runway, or if electrically active anvil debris clouds are in the general vicinity. Late in the countdown, an apparent problem with a gaseous nitrogen regulator in the shuttle's left-side orbital maneuvering system rocket pod developed. The regulator is part of a system that supplies the pressurized nitrogen gas used to operate the valves that feed propellant to the OMS engine. After hurried last-minute troubleshooting, engineers were able to re-seat the valve, leaving weather as the only concern. As the countdown moved within 45 minutes of launch, it became increasingly clear the weather was not going to cooperate. Finally, at 7:21 p.m., NASA test director Steve Altemus told the team to stand down for the day. "We will scrub for today and at this point we'll go ahead and secure," he radioed. The flight plan below will be updated shortly to reflect a Friday launch, should NASA exercise that option. A revised NASA television schedule will be posted here as soon as it's available. During a countdown status briefing earlier this week, Altemus said NASA's strategy would be to make two back-to-back launch attempts and then to stand down for two days to top off the shuttle's on-board supplies of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. NASA could make three attempts in four days, but that option would only be considered if the weekend weather forecast dramatically improves. As of this writing, that does not appear likely and if Endeavour doesn't get off the pad by Friday, launch likely will slip to Monday. But NASA has not yet announced when a second launch attempt will be made. Because of today's launch delay, the space station's current occupants - Expedition 4 astronauts Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz will set a new U.S. space endurance record whenever they eventually land. Had Endeavour taken off on time, they would have landed aboard Endeavour on June 11 after 187 days 20 hours and 23 minutes off planet. That would have been just shy of astronaut Shannon Lucid's record of 188 days and four hours, set in 1996 aboard the Russian Mir space station. With today's delay, Bursch and Walz will now exceed Lucid's space duration record. 08:05 p.m., 05/30/02, Update: Launch officially re-targeted for Friday NASA managers tonight decided to press ahead with another attempt to launch the shuttle Endeavour Friday evening, despite a forecast that calls for a 70 percent chance of more stormy weather. Similar conditions are expected over the next several days. If the shuttle fails to get off the ground Friday, NASA could make a third launch attempt Saturday, assuming the weather makes a dramatic improvement. But given the current forecast, if Endeavour doesn't get off the pad Friday launch likely would be delayed to Monday to give engineers time to top off on-board supplies of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen to power the ship's electrical generators. The mission flight plan posted below has been updated to reflect a launching Friday. =================================================================== NASA orders additional delay due to weather (05/31/02) 10:00 a.m., 05/31/02, Update: Friday launch attempt scrubbed NASA managers this morning decided to call off a second attempt to launch the shuttle Endeavour Friday evening because of expected thunderstorms with possible hail in the late afternoon and evening. The official forecast is 80 percent no go and mission managers decided around 9:45 a.m. not to begin fueling for a planned 7:22 p.m. launch. Instead, the mission management team will meet again at 7:30 p.m. this evening to assess the weather and discuss launch options. Depending on how the forecast plays out in reality, the MMT could opt to meet again Saturday morning for another pre-fueling assessment for a possible Saturday launching. But the forecast for Saturday and Sunday is 70 percent "no go" both days and the MMT could decide tonight to stand down for two days, top off the shuttle's on-board supplies of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, and make another round of launch attempts starting Monday. The concern today was the chance of hail later this evening during the second of two waves of expected storms. If NASA made a launch attempt and was unable to get Endeavour off the ground, they would be unable to roll a protective gantry around the orbiter until after its external tank was drained. That's normal. But a hail storm could damage the unprotected shuttle's heat shield tiles or the tank's foam insulation. 02:40 p.m., 05/31/02, Update: Shuttle grounded until Monday With heavy rain pounding the Kennedy Space Center and no let up in sight, NASA managers moved up a planned 7:30 p.m. shuttle launch review meeting to 2 p.m. and promptly ruled out any attempt to launch the shuttle Endeavour on Saturday. Instead, engineers will top off the ship's on-board supplies of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen and prepare for another launch attempt Monday. The team will be prepared to make three launch tries in four days before standing down again to top off the hydrogen and oxygen supplies needed to power the ship's electrical generators. Forecasters now predict an 80 percent chance of bad weather Saturday and Sunday and a 70 percent chance of another launch delay Monday. The forecast improves slightly as the week wears on, with a 60 percent "no go" outlook Tuesday through Thursday. Endeavour's initial launch attempt Thursday evening was called off when approaching thunderstorms moved into the Kennedy Space Center area. Despite a solid 70 percent no-go forecast, launch director Michael Leinbach decided to recycle for a 24-hour scrub-turnaround and to make a second launch try this evening. The forecast worsened to 80 percent no go by this morning and during a mission management team meeting prior to the start of fueling, NASA managers decided to forego a launch attempt today. Two waves of storms are expected to move through the area this afternoon and evening, including possible hail. The MMT then planned a 7:30 p.m. meeting to assess the actual weather conditions and to decide whether to meet again Saturday morning for yet another tanking meeting for a potential Saturday evening launch try. But as heavy rain swept across the space coast, NASA managers decided to move the meeting up to 2 p.m., when they decided to stand down for the weekend. Endeavour's crew will remain at the Kennedy Space Center. Because the next launch attempt is more than 24 hours away, NASA will not reveal exactly when Endeavour's five-minute launch window will open Monday, saying only that the shuttle will take off between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. The exact launch time will be announced Sunday. =================================================================== Launch delayed because of nitrogen valve problem (06/01/02) NASA managers today ordered engineers to replace a leaking nitrogen valve in the shuttle Endeavour's left-side orbital maneuvering system rocket pod, delaying launch from Monday to at least Tuesday and possibly longer. The valve in question provides the pressurized nitrogen used to operate the propellant valves that feed fuel to the OMS-pod engines. The OMS engines are used to circularize a shuttle's orbit after launch, to make major altitude changes and to slow the ship for re-entry. During Endeavour's initial countdown Thursday, engineers noticed a bit of leakage in the left-side nitrogen valve and ultimately cleared it for flight. As it turned out, stormy weather forced NASA to call of the countdown. Engineers initially believed a bit of contamination in the nitrogen system lodged briefly in the valve, preventing it from fully seating. But overnight, additional leakage was detected and NASA managers ordered the valve replaced at the launch pad. It's not yet clear exactly what impact the repair work might have on the shuttle's countdown. The repair work will not be finished in time for a Monday launch try, but if the valve swap-out and re-test go smoothly, Endeavour could be ready for launch by Tuesday. =================================================================== Regulator repair work forces additional delay (06/03/02) NASA managers today delayed the shuttle Endeavour's launch yet another day, from Tuesday to Wednesday, because of time need to bring in equipment to test a replacement nitrogen valve in the ship's left-side orbital maneuvering system rocket pod. The valve is in a regulator used to supply the pressurized nitrogen gas needed to operate other valves that feed propellant to the left-side OMS engine. The regulator valve replacement work began this morning and if all goes well, engineers will be ready Monday to top off the shuttle's on-board supplies of liquid hydrogen and oxygen to power Endeavour's electrical generators. With a full load of fuel cell reactants, Endeavour's crew will be able to make three launch attempts in four days, starting Wednesday. But the weather forecast is uncertain, with meteorologists calling for a roughly 50-50 chance of good weather. Conditions are expected to worsen Thursday and Friday. NASA's mission management team will meet again Monday to assess the valve replacement work and an updated forecast for Wednesday and later in the week. While Wednesday is the current launch target, nothing is set in stone at this point and the date could change again depending on a variety of factors. Will advise! Endeavour originally was scheduled for launch last Thursday, but the countdown was called off because of stormy weather. Late in the countdown, engineers noticed an apparent leak in the OMS-pod nitrogen valve, but additional tests indicated the problem had cleared itself. In any case, the countdown was recycled for Friday, but the next day NASA managers ruled out that option because of a dismal weekend forecast. Launch was re-targeted for Monday. Overnight Saturday, however, engineers noticed additional leakage in the OMS pod regulator valve and early Sunday, NASA managers ordered the valve replaced and delayed launch to Tuesday. The unexpected time needed to bring in test equipment forced today's delay to Wednesday. =================================================================== N2 regulator replaced; Endeavour cleared for June 5 launch (06/04/02) 09:45 a.m., 06/04/02, Update: Endeavour cleared for Wednesday launch; weather still marginal Engineers have completed the replacement of a nitrogen regulator in the shuttle Endeavour's left-side rocket pod and topped off the ship's on-board supplies of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, clearing the way for another launch attempt Wednesday afternoon (NASA will release the exact launch time later today). The weather remains a major question mark, however, with forecasters now predicting a 60 percent chance of thick clouds and local storms that could delay liftoff yet again. The outlook improves to 60 percent "go" on Thursday and falls back to 60 percent "no go" on Friday. NASA test director Steve Altemus said today the agency's strategy will be to make three launch attempts over the next four days. As it now stands, NASA has booked June 5 and 6 with the Air Force Eastern Range, the agency that provides required radar and tracking support for all Florida launchings. June 7 and 8 currently are reserved for tests of an Atlas rocket at the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. But Altemus said NASA managers are optimistic they can work with the Range and Atlas-builder Lockheed Martin to adjust the schedule to support additional shuttle launch attempts if necessary. NASA has been hoping for a break in the weather since last Thursday when Endeaovur's first launch try was scrubbed due to approaching storms. During the initial countdown, engineers noticed problems with a valve in a regulator that supplies the pressurized nitrogen gas needed to operate propellant valves in the shuttle's left-side orbital maneuvering system rocket pod. Engineers ultimately resolved the problem only to see launch scrubbed by the weather. Over the weekend, during subsequent testing, engineers noticed more unusual behavior in the suspect regulator. NASA managers then ordered its replacement, triggering what turned into another two days of delay. "We had to take off the heat shield and go up by the OMS nozzle and actually reach in there and remove three bolts to get that regulator out," Altemus said. "The regulator is about nine inches long, maybe two or three inches in diameter. The test setup to get the nitrogen flow and leak checks done, that was the most challenging part of the whole operation. But we got through those successfully and we're pleased with the results. "I can't say enough about the team at the launch pad," he added. "They're heroes. Those folks who work out at the launch pad do amazing things with that vehicle, they're ace mechanics, they know that vehicle inside and out and when we get in a tough spot, they always seem to pull us out of it." The regulator supplies nitrogen gas to an accumulator, or tank, that is "charged" with pressurized gas for launch. The gas in the accumulator is routed to a pair of propellant valves that allow the OMS engine to fire. Altemus said the accumulator was fully charged last Thursday and even if the regulator had failed during ascent, Endeavour's left-side OMS engine would have worked normally to help put the shuttle in orbit. Had problems developed after that, the astronauts would have been able to manage the on-board nitrogen supply to complete a normal mission. "We felt confident we could manage it on Thursday," he said. "In the turnaround, when we went to do some regulator flow checks on Friday, we saw a different signature. So not understanding, then, how that regulator would behave during the next terminal countdown, and not sure we would be able to get a sufficient accumulator charge to activate those valves during ascent, we opted to change out the hardware. "If we had that failure during ascent, we would essentially lose our GN2 (gaseous nitrogen) pressure to activate those bi-propellant valves and we would have a less than nominal OMS assist to orbit. (But) we could have managed with a single OMS assist to orbit, so really there was no safety of flight kind of consideration in this failure." An updated flight plan and a revised NASA television schedule will be posted here later today, after NASA releases the exact launch time for Wednesday. 05:00 p.m., 06/04/02, Update: Shuttle launch time announced NASA managers today said the shuttle Endeavour's countdown is targeted for a liftoff Wednesday at 5:22:48 p.m. The launch window actually opens at 5:17:49 p.m. and closes at 5:27:47 p.m. But NASA is targeting the middle of the window to improve abort options and to maximize performance. To dock with the international space station, the shuttle must end up in exactly the same orbital plane as the lab complex. Shuttles carry enough rocket fuel to launch five minutes to either side of the moment the launch pad is "in plane" with the station. By waiting until the pad is directly in plane, the shuttle minimizes the amount of fuel needed to reach the target orbit and improves the crew's ability to reach an East Coast landing site in the event of multiple main engine failures shortly after launch. An updated flight plan and revision B of NASA's TV schedule are posted below. =================================================================== Endeavour rockets into orbit (06/05/02) 09:00 a.m., 06/05/02, Update: Endeavour refueled for launch Keeping a wary eye on Florida's still-uncertain weather, engineers began refueling the shuttle Endeavour this morning for a second time, readying the ship for launch this afternoon on a space station crew rotation and robot arm repair mission. Liftoff is targeted for 5:22:48 p.m. The launch window closes at 5:27:47 p.m. The three-hour procedure to load Endeavour's external tank with a half-million gallons of supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen rocket fuel began at 8:41 a.m., about 45 minutes later than planned because of a false fire alarm at pad 39A that had to be checked out. Otherwise, there are no technical problems this morning and the weather remains the only cloud on the horizon, with forecasters predicting a 60 percent chance of another delay due to high, thick clouds. The primary goal of the mission is to deliver a fresh crew to the international space station and to bring the lab's current occupants home after 194 days in space - a U.S. endurance record. "We're looking forward to having this over with. It's not a very nice feeling," someone said earlier today in air-to-ground traffic between Russian flight controllers and the station. Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko asked about the forecast and said the weather was just fine in orbit. Onufrienko and his two American crewmates, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz, were launched to the station Dec. 5. Had Endeavour taken off on time last Thursday, their mission would have ended just a few hours shy of the U.S. space endurance mark of 188.4 days set by Shannon Lucid aboard the Russian Mir space station in 1996. Assumuming Endeavour gets off the pad today, Walz and Bursch will log 193 days 17 hours and 30 minutes off the planet, beating Lucid's mark by nearly a week. Today's launching marks the second time Endeavour has been fueled for a launch attempt. But three other launch dates - last Friday, Monday and Tuesday - were scrubbed before fueling ever began because of expected bad weather and work to replace a nitrogen regulator in the shuttle's left-side orbital maneuvering system rocket pod. 01:35 p.m., 06/05/02, Update: Weather outlook improves Forecasters say the weather outlook for today's launch of the shuttle Endeavour remains "challenging," with multiple cloud decks, possible electrically active anvil clouds and high crosswinds at the shuttle's emergency runway. But meteorologists say anvil development will not be as extensive as in days past, the clouds appear thinner and upper level winds are light. Any storms that develop to the west of the spaceport late in the afternoon probably won't make it to the Cape area in time to pose a threat. But it will be close. In addition, crosswinds at the shuttle's emergency runway are expected to be right at NASA's 15-knot safety limit. But that limit can be extended to 17 knots if chief astronaut Charles Precourt, flying a shuttle training jet, deems it acceptable. For what it's worth, at 1:35 p.m. a chart showing the current status of 12 weather-related launch commit criteria showed no violations. Otherwise, Endeavour's countdown is ticking smoothly toward launch at 5:22:48 p.m. The ship's crew is expected to begin boarding shortly before 2 p.m. 03:00 p.m., 06/05/02, Update: Crew straps in for launch; weather appears 'go' The shuttle Endeavour's four crew members and their space station passengers - Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, Peggy Whitson and Sergei Treschev - strapped in for launch today, buoyed by a more positive weather forecast. Liftoff remains targeted for 5:22:48 p.m. and meteorologists say conditions are expected to be acceptable for launch. While clouds cover most of Florida, they are relatively thin and electrically benign. With crosswinds abating somewhat, the launch team is increasingly optimistic about getting Endeavour off the ground today. 05:35 p.m., 06/05/02, Update: Shuttle Endeavour finally blasts off The shuttle Endeavour rocketed into orbit this afternoon, hot on the trail of the international space station for a critical crew exchange and three spacewalks to upgrade the lab's robot arm and to fix what amounts to a broken wrist. Under heavy security, Endeavour vaulted away from pad 39A at 5:22:49 p.m., climbing through a hazy sky atop a brilliant jet of 5,000-degree flame from its twin solid-fuel boosters. The launching was timed to coincide with the moment Earth's rotation carried the launch pad into the plane of the space station's orbit. After wheeling about to line up on the proper trajectory, Endeavour streaked away on a course paralleling the East Coast. Launch came six days late because of stormy weather and work to replace a nitrogen regulator in the shuttle's left-side rocket pod. While today's launching came under an overcast sky, meteorologists said the clouds were thin and electrically benign, posing no danger to the crew. At the controls were commander Kenneth Cockrell, pilot Paul Lockhart and flight engineer Franklin Chang-Diaz, only the second person in history to make seven space flights. Their crewmates are French astronaut Philippe Perrin and the next crew of the international space station, Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, a veteran of the Mir space station, NASA biochemist Peggy Whitson and rookie cosmonaut Sergei Treschev. Korzun and company will replace the space station's current occupants, Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz, who were launched to the lab complex Dec. 5. Had Endeavour taken off on its first attempt last Thursday, Onufrienko and his crewmates would have landed June 11 to close out a voyage lasting 187 days and 19 hours. That would have been just a few hours shy of Shannon Lucid's U.S. space endurance record of 188.4 days, set in 1996 aboard the Russian Mir space station. Thanks to Endeavour's launch delays, Bursch and Walz are now scheduled to land June 17. In so doing, they will set a new U.S. record of 193 days 17 hours and 30 minutes in space. Korzun's crew plans to spend about 135 days aboard the space station before returning to Earth in October, replaced by yet another three-person crew. The station has been continuously staffed since Nov. 2, 580 straight days as of today. "I think we've trained well enough and long enough together that I don't anticipate we'll have any problems," Whitson said. "We have a good mix of personalities. Valeri's pretty outgoing and quite the joke teller and story teller, so he entertains us quite a bit. Sergei and I, we can add our own entertainment at times, so we're looking forward to working together." If all goes well, Cockrell will guide Endeavour to a docking with the space station just after noon on Friday. The primary goal fo the 110th shuttle mission is to replace the Expedition 4 crew and to deliver nearly 5,600 pounds of supplies and equipment, including some 1,500 pounds of scientific equipment. The astronauts also plan to stage three spacewalks to upgrade and repair the station's Canadian-built robot arm. The upgrade refers to installation of a $254 million mounting platform that will enable the Canadarm2 space crane to ride a motorized cart back and forth along a huge truss that eventually will extend the length of a football field. The cart is mounted on rails attached to the forward face of the only truss element currently in orbit, a $600 million component that is bolted to the top of the Destiny laboratory module. The seven-joint Canadarm2 currently is attached to the other side of the lab module. It is not long enough to attach any of the outboard truss segments and for station assembly to continue, it must be attached to the truss rail car. The mobile base system, or MBS, mounting platform is designed to be bolted to the top of the mobile transporter cart. It features four robot arm attachment points, each one of them capable of providing power and relaying data, including video from the arm's cameras, back to operators inside the station. Walz and Whitson will use Canadarm2 to lock onto the MBS Sunday, near the end of the first spacewalk by Perrin and Chang-Diaz, and pull it from Endeavour's cargo bay. The next day, they will use the arm to attach the MBS to the mobile transporter cart, activating a large mechanical claw to temporarily hold it in place. Then on Tuesday, Chang-Diaz and Perrin will complete the attachment task during a second spacewalk, bolting the MBS down, hooking up two power cables and six video and data lines. That will set the stage for the mission's third and final spacewalk next Thursday when Chang-Diaz and Perrin replace the arm's wrist-roll joint. Shortly after the space station remote manipulator system - SSRMS - robotic crane was installed last year, engineers discovered a subtle electronic glitch in the redundant circuitry used to control the movement of the arm's wrist-roll joint. For redundancy, independent electronic control systems are built into each of the arm's seven joints. In one of the two systems that can be used to control the wrist-roll joint, a malfunction can occur that prevents the release of brakes locking the joint in one position. That, in turn, can trigger an automatic shutdown, preventing controllers from using the arm even with the healthy avionics "string." After intensive troubleshooting, Canadian software engineers developed a computer programming patch that forces the arm's main computer to ignore the problem in the wrist-roll joint and not to order a shutdown before switching to the healthy avionics string. Before the most recent shuttle-station assembly mission, another patch was put in place that essentially tells the arm's computer to ignore the joint entirely when working through the faulty avionics string. The wrist-roll joint works normally with the other control system, but NASA managers want full redundancy to protect against problems down the road. As it now stands, a failure in the healthy control system could shut the arm down, interrupting assembly operations. "Certainly for normal operations, for any of the build outboard of where we are now, we need a fully functional arm," said shuttle flight director Paul Hill. "The arm we have now is fully functional on (one) string but if we fail this string, that takes us down to either one degraded string or, depending on the failure, two degraded strings." And so, on March 20, station managers decided to add a third spacewalk to Endeavour's mission so Perrin and Chang-Diaz could replace the faulty wrist-roll joint. Launch was delayed a month to give engineers time to develop a payload bay mounting fixture for the replacement joint and to give the spacewalkers additional time to train. "We've got one of those missions that has almost got too much in it to get done," said shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell. "We're looking forward to a very jam-packed timeline when we get on orbit." =================================================================== Astronauts spend busy first day in space (06/06/02) 08:30 a.m., 06/06/02, Update: Crew begins first full day in space The Endeavour astronauts were awakened at 7:23 a.m. to begin their first full day in space. The major activities on the flight plan today are rendezvous rocket firings to fine tune the shuttle's approach to the international space station; tests and checkout of the ship's robot arm; spacesuit checkout; and rendezvous computer setup. Costa Rica-born astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, making a record-tying seventh space flight, will take time out for a Costa Rican VIP call at 12:48 p.m., followed by interviews with Univision and Telemundo. The crew will enjoy a few hours of off-duty time starting at 5:38 p.m. and go to bed around 10:23 p.m. If all goes well, Endeavour will dock with the international space station around 12:17 p.m. Friday. Here's an updated flight plan for today's activity as uplinked to the crew from mission control: DAY/EDT....DD...HH...MM...EVENT 06/06/02 --- Flight Day 2 07:23 AM...00...14...00...Crew wakeup 10:03 AM...00...16...40...Airlock prep 10:29 AM...00...17...06...NC2 rendezvous rocket firing 10:48 AM...00...17...25...Treschev exercises 11:03 AM...00...17...40...Robot arm (RMS) powerup 11:18 AM...00...17...55...RMS checkout 11:18 AM...00...17...55...Chang-Diaz exercises 12:03 PM...00...18...40...RMS payload bay survey 12:33 PM...00...19...10...RMS powerdown 12:48 PM...00...19...25...Media interviews: Cockrell, Chang-Diaz 12:53 PM...00...19...30...Lockhart exercises 01:23 PM...00...20...00...Docking ring extension 01:23 PM...00...20...00...MAGR unstow and setup 01:23 PM...00...20...00...Korzun exercises 01:53 PM...00...20...30...Rendezvous laptop computer setup 02:28 PM...00...21...05...NPC rendezvous rocket firing 03:23 PM...00...22...00...Spacesuit checkout (2) 03:53 PM...00...22...30...Cockrell exercises 04:23 PM...00...23...00...Whitson exercises 04:48 PM...00...23...25...Spacesuit prep for transfer to ISS 05:33 PM...01...00...10...Crew off duty time begins 06:38 PM...01...01...15...Perrin exercises 06:38 PM...01...01...15...Rendezvous tools checkout 07:32 PM...01...02...09...NC3 rendezvous rocket firing 10:23 PM...01...05...00...Crew sleep begins (7 hours) =================================================================== Endeavour docks with space station (06/07/02) 08:15 a.m., 06/07/02, Update: Shuttle closes in on space station The shuttle Endeavour is closing in on the international space station today, on schedule for a docking at 12:17 p.m. as the two spacecraft pass over the Pacific Ocean northeast of Australia. Hatch opening is expected around 2 p.m. with a "welcome aboard" ceremony on tap a few minutes later. The primary goal of Endeavour's mission is to deliver a fresh crew to the international space station - Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, Peggy Whitson and Sergei Treschev - and to bring the lab's current occupants - Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz - back to Earth after 194 days in space. That will set a new U.S. space endurance record, beating the old mark of 188 days set by astronaut Shannon Lucid in 1996 aboard the Russian Mir space station. Today's rendezvous profile is standard procedure for Endeavour's crew, with the shuttle approaching from behind, passing directly below the outpost and ending up at a point about 310 feet directly in front with its payload bay facing the lab complex and its tail facing Earth. From there, commander Kenneth Cockrell will guide Endeavour to a gentle tenth-of-a-foot-per-second docking. "It's really a fun piloting task," Cockrell said in a NASA interview. "It's like driving a ship. You make very small inputs that take a long time to occur; but once they occur, they're very hard to stop. So it's something you need to do very precisely and it takes a lot of practice. "So we go in very slowly and gradually, we slow down at about 30 feet away from the docking port and just look through a zoomed-in camera at the target. The target has a little set of alignment guides on it and we make sure that we're all lined up, that the two vehicles are exactly in plane. "And then, from 30 feet in, we just hold a steady rate and we crash into the station," he joked. "That's a very slow crash. It's one-tenth of a foot per second. It's as slow as a snail would crawl." The terminal rendezvous phase will begin at 9:57 a.m. with the shuttle trailing the station by about 9.2 statute miles. From there, Cockrell and pilot Paul Lockhart will oversee a series of computer-controlled rocket firings designed to place the shuttle at a point 600 feet or so directly below the space station. At about that point, Cockrell will take over manual control and pilot Endeavour in a slow loop, called a TORVA maneuver, up to a point 310 feet directly in front of the lab as both spacecraft race through space at five miles per second. "We're going to come underneath it," Cockrell said. "We just tell the autopilot to start tilting the tail towards the Earth and then we scoot it along so that, as it tilts toward the Earth, we end up in front of the space station. It's kind of quasi-magic, but it works. "And then, while we're up here in front of the space station, the computer or the autopilot just holds the tail pointed straight at the Earth, and then we just guide it left, right, and in and out, down towards the station." The station will be oriented with its long axis in the direction of travel. A pressurized mating adapter mounted on the forward end of the Destiny laboratory module will face Endeavour. Destiny, in turn, is attached to the U.S. Unity module, a multi-hatch gateway linking the lab to the rest of the station. Directly across Unity from Destiny is a pressurized mating adapter leading into the Russian Zarya propulsion and cargo module. Zarya, in turn, is attached to the Russian Zvezda command module at the aft end of the station's long axis. A Progress supply ship currently is docked to Zvezda's aft port while the on-board crew's Soyuz lifeboat is docked to a downward-facing port on the Russian-built, NASA-financed Zarya module. Another Russian docking port in a module attached to Zvezda is currently vacant. Extending 90 feet up from the Unity module's zenith hatch is the Z1 truss and P6 solar array, which provides the bulk of the station's current power. The P6 array ultimately will be repositioned at the end of the station's main truss, the first element of which was installed during the most recent station assembly mission in April. The station's Quest airlock module, which will be used for all three of the upcoming STS-111 spacewalks, is attached to Unity's right-side, or starboard, hatch. Positioned directly in front of the station's long axis, Cockrell will manually guide Endeavour in so the docking system in the shuttle's cargo bay can mate with its counterpart on the pressurized mating adapter, or PMA. After hooks and latches engage, the two spacecraft will be locked together. Here's a detailed timeline of today's activities (in Eastern and mission elapsed time: EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 08:28 AM...01...15...05...NC4 rendezvous rocket firing 08:33 AM...01...15...10...Spacesuit removal 09:57 AM...01...16...34...TI rendezvous rocket firing 10:25 AM...01...17...02...Sunset 10:59 AM...01...17...36...Sunrise 11:03 AM...01...17...40...ISS crew meal 11:14 AM...01...17...51...MC 4 rendezvous burn 11:17 AM...01...17...54...Range: 1,500 feet 11:22 AM...01...17...59...Space station in proper orientation for docking 11:22 AM...01...17...59...Range: 1,000 feet 11:23 AM...01...18...00...KU radar to low power; range: 800 feet 11:27 AM...01...18...04...Last time for ISS to be in "approach ready" config 11:27 AM...01...18...04...Range: 600 feet (directly below station) 11:28 AM...01...18...05...Noon 11:28 AM...01...18...05...Begin approach timeline 11:29 AM...01...18...06...Range: 500 feet; start TORVA maneuver 11:31 AM...01...18...08...Range: 400 feet 11:39 AM...01...18...16...Range: 300 feet 11:41 AM...01...18...18...Range: 310 feet; (directly in front of station) 11:43 AM...01...18...20...Range: 250 feet 11:44 AM...01...18...21...Russian ground station acquisition of signal 11:45 AM...01...18...22...Last time to be in dock ready config 11:48 AM...01...18...25...Range: 200 feet 11:50 AM...01...18...27...Range: 170 feet 11:52 AM...01...18...29...Range: 150 feet 11:56 AM...01...18...33...Range: 100 feet 11:57 AM...01...18...34...Sunset 11:59 AM...01...18...36...Range: 75 feet 12:00 PM...01...18...37...Russian ground station loss of signal 12:03 PM...01...18...40...Range: 50 feet 12:06 PM...01...18...43...Range: 30 feet; start stationkeeping 12:08 PM...01...18...45...Walz preps PMA-2 for docking 12:11 PM...01...18...48...End stationkeeping; push to dock 12:16 PM...01...18...53...Range: 10 feet 12:17 PM...01...18...54...DOCKING 12:37 PM...01...19...14...Sunrise 12:48 PM...01...19...25...Leak checks 12:53 PM...01...19...30...Group B computer powerdown 01:13 PM...01...19...50...PCS setup 01:18 PM...01...19...55...Orbiter docking system prepped for ingress 01:58 PM...01...20...35...Hatch opening 02:13 PM...01...20...50...Welcome aboard! 02:28 PM...01...21...05...Safety briefing 02:53 PM...01...21...30...Spacewalk tools transferred to ISS 02:53 PM...01...21...30...Soyuz seatliner installation and checkout (all) 03:23 PM...01...22...00...Post docking laptop reconfig 03:38 PM...01...22...15...Spacesuit transfer 04:08 PM...01...22...45...Spacesuit to airlock 04:08 PM...01...22...45...VTR playback of docking 04:38 PM...01...23...15...Spacesuit resizing 04:53 PM...01...23...30...SOKOL pressure suit leak checks 04:58 PM...01...23...35...CPCG transfer 05:08 PM...01...23...45...REBA installation and setup 05:13 PM...01...23...50...Middeck transfers begin 05:23 PM...02...00...00...Cockrell exercises 06:08 PM...02...00...45...Plan review 07:08 PM...02...01...45...ISS daily planning conference 09:23 PM...02...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins 11:30 a.m., 06/07/02, Update: Endeavour poised for docking The shuttle Endeavour has reached a point 600 feet or so directly below the international space station. Commander Kenneth Cockrell, flying the shuttle manually, now will guide the shuttle through a quarter loop to a point 310 feet directly in front of the lab complex. Docking remains on track for 12:17 p.m. "We're about, oh just a couple or three miles behind you," Cockrell radioed the lab a few minutes past 11 a.m. "Got a real nice view of you." "Well super, yeah, we're just swinging around our cameras, too," replied station astronaut Carl Walz. "We had a tally ho a while back and we're looking forward to you guys docking." "Well, I've got three transfer line items sitting here on the flight deck with me, raring to go," Cockrell joked, referring to the station's next crew - Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, Peggy Whitson and Sergei Treschev. "Well great, we're looking forward to checking those transfer items off," Walz replied. "Yeah, lemme check my transfer list here... yeah, they're a flight day three transfer!" Bursch joked. Cockrell then told the station crew he would check back in after a few course correction rocket firings. "We have a couple of little burn thingies here and we'll be back with you shortly." "OK, good luck with the burn thingies," called Bursch. The first live television from the station showing the shuttle approaching the station from behind and below against the cloud-speckled backdrop of the southern Pacific Ocean, appeared at 11:10 a.m. 12:25 p.m., 06/07/02, Update: Endeavour docks with space station The shuttle Endeavour gently docked with the international space station today as the two spacecraft sailed along a southeasterly trajectory over the Pacific Ocean approaching New Zealand. "Endeavour, arriving," called station engineer and Navy Capt. Daniel Bursch, ringing a ship's bell aboard the lab complex as Endeavour closed in. Flying the shuttle manually from Endeavour's aft flight deck, shuttle skipper Kenneth Cockrell then guided the spaceplane to a tenth-of-a-foot-per-second linkup at 12:25 p.m. Hatches between Endeavour and the space station will be opened around 2 p.m., after a series of leak checks to verify the integrity of the docking system seals. Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Bursch and Carl Walz plan to stage a brief welcoming ceremony around 2:15 p.m. After a safety briefing to familiarize the shuttle astronauts with critical station systems, the combined crews will get down to work, transferring supplies and equipment from Endeavour's cabin into the station. The top priority on the agenda today is to transfer three custom-fitted Soyuz seat liners and Russian pressure suits needed by the station's new crew in order to use the lab's emergency lifeboat. Once the pressure suits are tested and the seat liners are in place inside the Soyuz capsule, Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, Peggy Whitson and Sergei Treschev will officially replace Onufrienko, Walz and Bursch as the station's fifth full-time crew. An official change-of-command ceremony, however, will not be staged until Monday. 01:15 p.m., 06/07/02, Update: Astronauts take time with docking procedure Fifty minutes after the shuttle Endeavour's docking with the international space station, the two vehicles are not yet in a "hard docked" configuration. The shuttle's docking system ring is engaged with its counterpart on the station, but the ring has not yet been retracted to lock the two vehicles together. It has taken longer than usual for oscillations to damp out, forcing the shuttle crew to re-extend the docking ring to provide more time. 03:25 p.m., 06/07/02, Update: Station crew welcomes replacements aboard (updated at 5:25 p.m.) A final hatch between the shuttle Endeavour and the international space station was cranked open at 3:08 p.m. today, allowing the shuttle astronauts to float into the U.S. Destiny laboratory module where Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz were waiting to welcome them aboard. Hatch opening came about 50 minutes behind schedule because it took longer than expected for docking-induced oscillations to damp out and for an additional cycling of the shuttle's docking collar. But lead flight director Paul Hill said there were no technical problems of any significance and that controllers were just taking a bit of extra time to make sure a very slight misalignment had been corrected before latches locked the two spacecraft together. The delay did, however, preclude live television coverage of the hatch opening and the astronauts were asked to videotape their entrance into the station for later downlink to mission control. As it was, hatch opening and a brief "welcome aboard" ceremony took place while the station was out of direct contact with mission control. Viewers were, however, able to see the astronauts floating back and forth between the shuttle and the station a few minutes later, already busy moving supplies and equipment into the lab complex. The astronauts and cosmonauts appeared to be in good spirits, with plenty of smiles to go around. During a brief chat with family members in Moscow, incoming Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun and Sergei Treschev said they were glad to be aboard the station, thanking shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell and his crewmates for a smooth docking. 06:30 p.m., 06/07/02, Update: Engineers assess flash evaporator problem Engineers are assessing an apparent problem with the shuttle Endeavour's flash evaporator cooling system. Two independent controllers (with slightly different capabilities) can be used to operate the flash evaporator system, but one of them - FES primary B - appears to have failed. The primary A controller seems to be working normally, as is a secondary controller with limited capabilities. The FES is used during certain phases of ascent and entry to reject heat generated by the shuttle's electrical systems. It also can be used to get rid of excess water generated by the shuttle's electrical generators. This problem will have no immediate impact on Endeavour's mission to the international space station. But re-entry procedures likely will be modified slightly because of the primary B controller failure. Background on the flash evaporator system can be found in NASA's on-line shuttle reference book. =================================================================== Station gyro fails; Leonardo attached (06/08/02) 06:15 a.m., 06/08/02, Update: Astronauts prepare to install cargo module The Endeavour astronauts were awakened at 5:23 a.m. today for a busy day of work to attach a pressurized cargo module to the international space station. Shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell, operating the shuttle's 50-foot-long robot arm, plans to lift the Italian-built cargo module out of Endeavour's cargo bay around 9 a.m. He then will maneuver the $150 million module to within a few inches of a downward-facing docking port on the U.S. Unity module so powerful latches can engage to lock it in place. "We're up and ready to go, we've got a busy day ahead of us," outgoing station astronaut Carl Walz radioed flight controllers. The multi-purpose logistics module, known as Leonardo, is more fully loaded than any of the four previous MPLM flights to the station. Fifteen of 16 internal stowage racks are occupied with supplies, food, clothing, spare parts, new computers and other gear. Leonardo also is carrying a science rack provided by the European Space Agency called the Microgravity Science Glovebox. The glovebox is a sealed enclosure with reach-in gloves that gives station scientists an isolated environment in which to safely manipulate fluids, flames and other toxic materials. Here's a description from NASA's press kit: "The glovebox, designed to stay in the Destiny laboratory for 10 years, will support the first two space station materials science experiments, also being delivered on STS-111. These experiments will study materials processes similar to those used to make semiconductors for electronic devices and components for jet engines. In exchange for building the glovebox, the European Space Agency will be able to perform experiments inside Destiny until that agencyÍs space station laboratory the Columbus Orbital Facility is attached to the station in a couple of years. "The Microgravity Science Glovebox provides vacuum, venting and gaseous nitrogen, as well as power and data interfaces for experiments. The MSG occupies an entire rack inside the Destiny lab and is more than twice as large as gloveboxes flown previously on the space shuttle. This enables the MSG to hold experiments about the size of an airline carry-on bag." Some 1,500 pounds of science gear will be unloaded during Endeavour's visit, along with 2,500 pounds of science support hardware. All told, Leonardo is carrying some 5,600 pounds of cargo and supplies to the station. Getting the module unloaded will be difficult enough. But the astronauts and cosmonauts also must repack it with no-longer-needed equipment, trash, packing foam and other gear that must be returned to Earth. "We have a very full MPLM, with 15 of the 16 rack spots taken up and with hopes of filling it to 90 percent capacity for return, which will unload sort of a backlog of excess supplies and equipment on board space station that really needs to be removed," Cockrell said in a NASA interview. "So we have a full plate in front of us." Mike Rodriggs, launch package manager for STS-111, described loading Leonardo for return to Earth as part of "doing a spring cleaning, basically taking an assessment of all the items on board that really don't need to be there, they've served their usefulness or they have to come down for refurbishment or whatever. "So we're just compiling them all, finding locations inside the MPLM and just having the crew repack them inside the MPLM," he said. Leonardo should be in place by around 11 a.m. But the crew will not actually open the module and float inside until around 6 p.m., after a lengthy activation procedure has been completed. In the meantime, the astronauts will review procedures for a spacewalk Sunday by Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin and breakout the tools that will be used in the planned excursion. A mission status news briefing is on tap at 4 p.m. Here is an updated timeline of today's activities as uplinked to the crew from mission control (in Eastern and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 06/08/02 --- FD-4 (updated 06/08/02) Sat 05:23 AM...02...12...00...STS crew wakeup Sat 05:53 AM...02...12...30...ISS crew wakeup Sat 07:23 AM...02...14...00...ISS daily planning conference Sat 07:58 AM...02...14...35...Robot arm (RMS) powerup Sat 08:08 AM...02...14...45...Russian PAO event Sat 08:08 AM...02...14...45...Middeck transfers resume Sat 08:28 AM...02...15...05...High definition TV setup Sat 08:43 AM...02...15...20...RMS grapples Leonardo module Sat 08:43 AM...02...15...20...Lockhart exercises Sat 09:03 AM...02...15...40...RMS unberths Leonardo Sat 09:03 AM...02...15...40...Walz exercises Sat 09:53 AM...02...16...30...Chang-Diaz exercises Sat 10:13 AM...02...16...50...Leonardo attachment begins Sat 11:38 AM...02...18...15...RMS ungrapples Leonardo Sat 11:38 AM...02...18...15...Onufrienko exercises Sat 11:48 AM...02...18...25...RMS powerdown Sat 12:08 PM...02...18...45...CBGA experiment transfeer Sat 12:38 PM...02...19...15...Joint crew meal Sat 01:38 PM...02...20...15...Spacewalk 1: Procedures review Sat 02:38 PM...02...21...15...Spacewalk 1: Tools configured Sat 02:38 PM...02...21...15...Leonardo vestibule config for ingress Sat 02:38 PM...02...21...15...Cockrell exercises Sat 02:38 PM...02...21...15...Middeck transfers resume Sat 03:08 PM...02...21...45...Bursch exercises Sat 03:48 PM...02...22...25...Quest equipment lock prep Sat 04:00 PM...02...22...37...Mission status briefing on NASA TV Sat 04:08 PM...02...22...45...ISS: Leonardo activation part 1 Sat 04:33 PM...02...23...10...Power tool checkout Sat 04:33 PM...02...23...10...Handover activities Sat 05:08 PM...02...23...45...ISS: Leonardo activation part 2 Sat 05:23 PM...03...00...00...Perrin exercises Sat 05:23 PM...03...00...00...Bursch exercises Sat 06:08 PM...03...00...45...Leonardo ingress Sat 06:23 PM...03...01...00...Express rack transfer Sat 07:08 PM...03...01...45...ISS daily planning conference Sat 09:23 PM...03...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins The space station's new crew - Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, Peggy Whitson and Sergei Treschev - officially took over from their Expedition 4 predecessors around 7 p.m. Friday. That milestone occurred after the new crew's custom-fitted Soyuz seatliners and Sokol pressure suits were transferred from the shuttle to the station. With the seatliners and suits in place, Korzun and his crewmates can use the station's Soyuz lifeboat to evacuate the lab complex in an emergency. Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Walz are now considered members of Endeavour's crew. Whitson will be bunking in a sleep station inside the U.S. Destiny module while Korzun and Treschev will occupy two staterooms in the Zvezda command module at the other end of the station. It is the first station crew to have more rookies than veterans. "Sergei and Peggy, they are unflown astronauts but they have had very nice training and they're ready for flight," said Korzun. "I feel it's a little bit difficult for an unflown cosmonaut and astronaut to imagine the situation on the station. We've had good training on simulators in the laboratory here on the ground, but the real station is not the same as here on the land. This is true. "But I think we have had enough time and the previous crew will familiarize us with situation on the station. We need a short time to understand exactly all configuration of all systems and equipment which is on the station." Such "handover" sessions are scheduled throughout the docked phase of Endeavour's mission to give Onufrienko, Bursch and Walz time to brief their successors on the details of day-to-day life aboard the station. What they will not be able to do is fully prepare Whitson and Treschev for the psychological challenges that await them during a long-duration stay in space, cut off from the support of friends and relatives. "I think probably the most challenging thing after some period of time being in space is just going to be missing the Earth," Whitson said. "I'm an outdoors person, my hobby is working in the yard with my plants so I think I will miss just the planet, being close to the plants and the planet itself. But it's obviously a phenomenal view so that will give me a new perspective from which to look at it. So I'm looking forward to the experience." Korzun agreed "we will miss our friends, land and family." "But especially what Peggy said about her yard, she will think about it every time because on the station, this is just fabric, metal," he said. "During our flight on space station Mir, there was a greenhouse and everybody had a chance to look at these green plants in a greenhouse, it was very nice psychological support. I think we will grow something." Korzun and his crewmates are scheduled to return to Earth in mid October. 08:50 a.m., 06/08/02, Update: Station commander: Send up Cindy Crawford! During a news conference today with the space station's three Russian crew members, a reporter in Moscow asked Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun what he thought about the possibility that *NSynch's Lance Bass might visit the lab complex later this year as a space tourist. "Well how about Cindy Crawford?" Korzun quipped. "We would be very happy to see one of the super models." Korzun quickly said he was just joking, of course, adding "we will be very happy to receive any space tourist, they're very welcome here. For example, speaking about (South African tourist) Mark Shuttleworth, he is a great computer specialist and he was very helpful aboard the station. So probably somebody with certain professional qualities would be better." The next Soyuz flight with a potential tourist seat is scheduled for launch in October. 11:45 a.m., 06/08/02, Update: Leonardo module attached; station gyro failure assessed Just after the Endeavour astronauts successfully attached a cargo module to the international space station this morning, engineers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston detected an apparent failure in one of the four control moment gyroscopes, or CMGs, that help keep the lab complex properly oriented. At the same time, the astronauts aboard the station heard a loud growling noise from the area where the gyros are located. The station's gyroscopic motion control system can operate with just two operational CMGs and the failure of one is not expected to have any immediate impact. But engineers want to find out exactly what might have happened to CMG-1 to make sure a similar failure does not happen again and to assess possible downstream repair options. "About 45 minutes ago, it looks like we had a hard mechanical failure on the spin bearing on CMG 1," astronaut Robert Thirsk radioed the station crew from mission control. "The temperature of the spin bearing shot way up, the vibration levels and the current levels also shot up as well. "Currently, CMG-1 is spinning down. We've disabled the spin motor and also taken off braking, so it's spinning down actually very quickly," Thirsk said. "So it does look like it's some kind of mechanical problem with that bearing. "That's the bad news. The good news is the motion control system on the space station is in good shape, we have good momentum managment, it doesn't look like we have any impact right now. We're continuing to evaluate and we'll let you know if we have any further news." A few minutes before 11 a.m., outgoing station engineer Carl Walz reported hearing an unusual noise inside the Unity module. He said the noise appeared to be coming from the module's zenith area. Thirsk then told Walz engineers were working an issue with a spin bearing in CMG No. 1. Walz said the noise was quite noticeable inside the module. "We're hearing a pretty loud, audible noise, kind of a growling noise, from inside the node," Walz reported. "It looks like we have a mechanical failure of the spin bearings on CMG-1," Thirsk replied. "It's currently spinning down right now. The growling noise is undoubtedly due to vibration." The four 800-pound CMGs are mounted inside a truss that extends upward from the Unity module's zenith port. The truss also carries the station's main solar arrays. The CMGs are used to control the station's orientation in space by changing the orientation of the spinning wheels inside. The station's orientation, or attitude, can be controlled by just two CMGs in a worst-case scenario. The gyro systems are modular and virtually all major internal components can be replaced by spacewalking astronauts. Details about what might have happened to CMG-1 are not yet available. The Z1 truss was attached to the space station during shuttle mission STS-92 in October 2000. Here's a bit of background on the system from the STS-92 press kit: The motion control subsystem (MCS) hardware launched as part of the Z1 element includes the CMGs and the CMG assemblies. This hardware will not be activated until Mission 5A, when the GN&C MDM will be activated with the U.S. Lab. The CMG assembly consists of four CMGs and a micrometeorite/orbital debris shield. The four CMGs, which will control the attitude of the ISS, have a spherical momentum storage capability of 14,000 ft-lb/sec, the scalar sum of the individual CMG wheel moments. The momentum stored in the CMG system at any given time equals the vector sum of the individual CMG momentum vectors. To maintain the ISS in the desired attitude, the CMG system must cancel, or absorb, the momentum generated by the disturbance torques acting on the station. If the average disturbance torque is nonzero, the resulting CMG output torque is also nonzero, and momentum builds up in the CMG system. When the CMG system saturates, it is unable to generate the torque required to cancel the disturbance torque, which results in the loss of attitude control. The CMG system saturates when momentum vectors have become parallel and only momentum vectors change. When this happens, control torques perpendicular to this parallel line are possible, and controllability about the parallel line is lost. Russian segment thrusters are used to desaturate the CMGs. An ISS CMG consists of a large flat wheel that rotates at a constant speed (6,600 rpm) and develops an angular momentum of 3,500 ft-lb/sec about its spin axis. This rotating wheel is mounted in a two-degree-of-freedom gimbal system that can point the spin axis (momentum vector) of the wheel in any direction. At least two CMGs are needed to provide attitude control. The CMG generates an output reaction torque that is applied to the ISS by inertially changing the direction of its wheel momentum. The CMG's output torque has two components, one proportional to the rate of change of the CMG gimbals and a second proportional to the inertial body rate of the ISS as sensed at the CMG base. Because the momentum along the direction of the spin axis is fixed, the output torque is constrained to lie in the plane of the wheel. That is why one CMG cannot provide the three-axis torque needed to control the attitude of the ISS. Each CMG has a thermostatically controlled survival heater to keep it within thermal limits before the CMGs are activated on Mission 5A. The heaters are rated at 120 watts and have an operating temperature range of -42 to -35¡F. 05:10 p.m., 06/08/02, Update: Gyro failure kicks off intense replanning NASA engineers do not know what caused a bearing assembly in one of the space station's control moment gyros to fail this morning or even whether the assembly stayed intact as the massive gyro wheel, spinning at some 6,600 rpm, quickly screeched to a halt. But the station's other three gyros continue to operate normally, spinning in different planes as commanded by on-board computers to keep the lab complex in the desired orientation. The 800-pound gyros are critical to station operation, keeping the outpost properly oriented without the use of precious rocket fuel. The lab complex can operate with just two working gyros and as such, two more failures would have to occur before an on-board crew would have to shut the system down and instead rely on Russian rocket thrusters to provide orientation control. That's the worst-case scenario and lead flight director Paul Hill said the station is in no danger of losing gyro control. "Losing a CMG is a big deal, it's a major component," Hill said at an afternoon briefing. "But from a risk perspective right now, we're in good shape. We're single-fault tolerant whether we're docked or not docked. So for the long haul on station, we can still lose one more CMG and still hold attitude on the station side and minimize the amount of propellant we use. So we're in good shape. Even so, losing a second CMG would "be a gut check," Hill said, "because then after one more failure we can't hold attitude with the CMGs and we're going to be burning a lot more Russian propellant until we get the CMGs fixed." The CMGs are built by L-3 Communications of Teterboro, N.J. NASA has a spare CMG available, but it cannot be launched until early next year. That's because a CMG package - the gyro and necessary sub-assemblies - weighs some 1,100 pounds at launch and must be mounted on a special carrier beam in the shuttle's cargo bay. The next two shuttle flights, in August and October, will carry up huge sections of the station's solar array truss and don't have room for a CMG. As a result, the station may have to get by with three CMGs until early next year. "For now, we're still a failure away from having zero fault tolerance, so we're two failures away from really having a technical problem that we need to jump through hoops for," Hill said. "But this is a major component that's failed and we're going to do the best we can to get the next CMG ready to fly and into an orbiter and get it changed out. But it could be six to nine months before we get this thing into orbit and get it changed." The four CMGs are mounted inside a truss that extends upward from the Unity module's zenith port. The Z1 truss, attached to the space station during shuttle mission STS-92 in October 2000, also carries the station's main solar arrays. Engineers first noticed problems with CMG-1 Friday evening. This morning, telemetry indicated current spikes and higher temperatures when suddenly, just before 11 a.m., one of two bearing assemblies apparently failed. Outgoing station astronaut Carl Walz, floating in the Unity module, reported hearing "a pretty loud, audible noise, kind of a growling noise, from inside the node" in the direction of Z1. Station flight director Rick LaBrode said ground controllers quickly disconnected the gyro from its drive motor. An unpowered wheel normally takes 16 to 20 hours to freely spin to a stop. This morning, CMG-1 spun down in one hour, grinding and growling all the way. Hill said a quick look at the Z1 truss using a camera mounted on the shuttle's robot arm revealed no obvious signs of "uncontained fragmentation," as the saying goes. But additional inspections likely will be carried out later in the mission to make sure. In the meantime, flight planners are assessing the potential impact of CMG-1's failure on upcoming work to install robot arm attachment platform to a small rail car already mounted on the unfinished solar array truss. The flight plan originally called for the mobile base system platform to be hauled out of Endeavour's cargo bay Sunday, near the end of a spacewalk by Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin. The MBS was to be positioned within a few feet of the rail car overnight and then mounted in place on Monday. As it turns out, the shadow of the shuttle's nose will fall on the area where the MBS was to be parked. If left in that position overnight, the MBS could be damaged by low temperatures. Engineers already were planning to test an unusual station orientation on this flight, one in which the CMGs would be used to tilt the complex 10 degrees to one side to improve solar power generation. That 10-degree roll bias would have put the MBS in direct sunlight, eliminating the thermal issue. But engineers are not sure they can safely implement the 10-degree tilt with just three CMGs. Troubleshooters currently are analyzing the procedure in light of today's failure and studying whether the robot arm can simply park the MBS somewhere else overnight and achieve the same thermal results. The issue is somewhat complicated, however, because the temperature of the MBS must be within 50 degrees of the temperature of the rail car for a precise attachment. But LaBrode said he is confident the engineers will figure out a workable solution and that the MBS will be installed on the rail car Monday as planned, after Sunday's spacewalk by Perrin and Chang-Diaz. The spacewalk, the first of three planned for Endeavour's mission, is scheduled to begin around 11:08 a.m. =================================================================== Spacewalk preps robot arm base for attachment (06/09/02) 06:30 a.m., 06/09/02, Update: Astronauts gear up for first spacewalk The Endeavour astronauts, awakened at 5:23 a.m. today, are gearing up for the first of three spacewalks to upgrade and repair the international space station's $600 million Canadarm2 space crane. Astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz and French flier Philippe Perrin are scheduled to begin the six-hour excursion at 11:08 a.m. One of the primary goals of Endeavour's mission is to mount a $254 million attachment platform, called the mobile base system, to a small rail car already mounted on the forward face of the S-zero truss. S-zero is the only segment currently in place, but eight more sections will be added on upcoming flights, extending the beam the length of a football field. The station's solar arrays eventually will be mounted on each end of the huge truss. But additional truss sections can only be added if the station's Canadian-built robot arm can be moved along the truss to outboard attachment points. The mobile base system installed during Endeavour's flight will do just that, allowing the mobile transporter to haul the arm back and forth to various worksites. During today's spacewalk, Chang-Diaz and Perrin will do a bit of preparatory work to ready the MBS for attachment to the mobile transporter Monday. They also will mount a robot arm grapple fixture on the station's current solar array truss and stow Russian service module debris shields on the hull of the outpost. In addition, Chang-Diaz will inspect the Z1 truss extending upward from the station's Unity module. One of four large control moment gyros, or CMGs, inside the Z1 truss failed Saturday. The CMGs are used to change or maintain the station's orientation in space and CMG-1 apparently suffered a bearing failure Saturday. The station crew reported hearing a loud growling noise as the massive gyro spun down and Chang-Diaz was asked to inspect the area today to find out whether the bearing failure caused any external damage. This will be the 39th space station assembly spacewalk, the 14th staged from the station itself and the seventh from the U.S. Quest airlock module. Chang-Diaz and Perrin are the 37th and 38th individuals to participate in a station assembly spacewalk. Going into Endeavour's mission, 30 Americans, one Canadian and five Russian cosmonauts had logged 236 hours and 27 minutes of spacewalk time in 38 ISS assembly spacewalks. The first objective for Perrin and Chang-Diaz during today's spacewalk is to attach a power and data grapple fixture - PDGF - on the P6 solar array truss that extends upward from the Unity module. The grapple fixture will be needed next year when the array is moved from the upward-facing Z1 truss and mounted on one end of the main solar array truss currently under construction. Chang-Diaz, wearing a spacesuit with red stripes, will be anchored to the end of the shuttle's 50-foot-long robot arm for most of this first spacewalk while Perrin will be the designated "free floater." The second objective of the spacewalk is to remove the micrometeoroid debris shields form the shuttle's cargo bay and temporarily stow them on the pressurized mating adapter, or PMA, between Unity and the Russian Zarya module. As already mentioned, the debris shields will be deployed in late July by station crew members Peggy Whitson and Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun. Designed and built by the Russians, the six debris shields weigh about 100 pounds altogether. They are the first in a set of about two dozen panels that ultimately will be installed on the Zvezda module. When fully deployed, the complete set of panels will reduce the odds of a micrometeoroid strike that could penetrate the module's hull by about 1 percent. While Perrin and Chang-Diaz work to transfer and stow the debris shields, Whitson and outgoing station astronaut Carl Walz, working at a control station inside the Destiny laboratory module, will lock the station's robot arm on the MBS, still mounted in the shuttle's cargo bay. The robot arm will provide the "keep-alive" electrical power to operate critical heaters inside the MBS until it can be attached to the mobile transporter Monday. After the arm is attached and keep-alive power is flowing to the MBS, Chang-Diaz and Perrin will remove no-longer-needed thermal covers before re-entering the station's airlock. The station arm then will pull the MBS from the cargo bay and move it to a point a few feet away from the mobile transporter where it will remain overnight. That will keep the temperature of both pieces of hardware within 50 degrees of each other, which is required for a proper attachment. Because of the angle between the sun and the plane of the space station's orbit, engineers originally planned to tilt the station about 10 degrees to one side to eliminate overnight shadowing from the shuttle on the MBS. Without the tilt, the sun-shuttle geometry would leave the MBS in the shadow of Endeavour's nose for portions of each orbit. But the failure of CMG-1 Saturday forced flight controllers to change their plans. While the station can safely operate with three working gyros, engineers decided not to implement the planned 10-degree roll bias because of stability issues. Instead, they decided to yaw the station slightly to one side to eliminate the shadowing problem. Here's an updated timeline of today's activities as uplinked to the crew from mission control (in Eastern and mission elapsed time): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 05:23 AM...03...12...00...STS/ISS crew wakeup 06:23 AM...03...13...00...EVA-1: Begin preparations 07:18 AM...03...13...55...Airlock depress to 10.2 psi 07:23 AM...03...14...00...ISS daily planning conference 07:53 AM...03...14...30...Walz exercises 08:08 AM...03...14...45...MPLM transfers resume 08:13 AM...03...14...50...Cockrell exercises 08:53 AM...03...15...30...Onufrienko exercises 09:13 AM...03...15...50...EVA-1: Spacesuit purge 09:18 AM...03...15...55...Airlock repress to 14.7 psi 09:28 AM...03...16...05...EVA-1: Oxygen pre-breathe 09:38 AM...03...16...15...ISS: Whitson exercises 10:28 AM...03...17...05...EVA-1: Airlock depressurization 10:43 AM...03...17...20...Walz exercises 11:08 AM...03...17...45...EVA-1: Airlock egress and setup 11:33 AM...03...18...10...EVA-1: EV1 installs PDGF on P6 11:33 AM...03...18...10...EVA-1: EV2 preps SM debris panels for stowage 11:33 AM...03...18...10...ISS crew maneuvers SSRMS for PDGF unstow 11:53 AM...03...18...30...Bursch exercises 12:03 PM...03...18...40...EVA-1: EV2 assists with PDGF installation 12:18 PM...03...18...55...ISS crew maneuvers SSRMS for PDGF installation 12:53 PM...03...19...30...Shuttle crew meal 01:18 PM...03...19...55...EVA-1: Service module debris panels stowed 02:48 PM...03...21...25...SSRMS grapples PDGF 1 03:03 PM...03...21...40...EVA-1: MBS blanket removal 03:38 PM...03...22...15...Bursch exercises 04:08 PM...03...22...45...ISS: MPLM transfers resume 04:13 PM...03...22...50...SSRMS unberths MBS 04:33 PM...03...23...10...EVA-1: Airlock ingress 05:08 PM...03...23...45...EVA-1 Airlock repressurization 05:23 PM...04...00...00...Onufrienko exercises 05:30 PM...04...00...07...Mission status briefing 07:08 PM...04...01...45...ISS daily planning conference 09:23 PM...04...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins If all goes well, the mobile base system will be attached to the mobile transporter Monday when a large claw will engage, locking the two components together. During a second spacewalk Tuesday, Chang-Diaz and Perrin will finish the job, bolting the MBS down and attaching the cables that will provide power to the arm and relay data and video back to operators inside the station. During the third and final spacewalk Thursday, Chang-Diaz and Perrin will replace Canadarm2's wrist joint. While the joint works normally using one of its independent control systems, the redundant system suffered a failure last year and NASA wants the arm fully operational before proceeding with truss assembly. 07:00 a.m., 06/09/02, Update: Predicted shuttle KU downlink TV windows Here are the predicted windows for KU-band television from orbit during today's spacewalk by Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin (in EDT): KU Window Open...KU Window Close 06:55 a.m........07:22 a.m. 08:31 a.m........08:52 a.m. 09:29 a.m........09:36 a.m. 09:54 a.m........09:56 a.m. 10:27 a.m........10:34 a.m. 11:00 a.m........11:10 a.m. 12:21 p.m........12:49 p.m. 01:59 p.m........02:26 p.m. 03:37 p.m........03:47 p.m. 03:49 p.m........04:02 p.m. 11:30 a.m., 06/09/02, Update: Spacewalk begins Floating in the international space station's Quest airlock module, astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz and French flier Philippe Perrin switched their spacesuits to internal battery power at 11:27 a.m. to officially begin a planned six-hour spacewalk. 01:00 p.m., 06/09/02, Update: Spacewalkers mount grapple fixture Astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, anchored to the end of the international space station's robot arm, is being moved up to the P6 solar array truss to install a grapple fixture that will be used next year by the robot arm to move the array down to its permanent location. Spectacular video from the shuttle Endeavour showed Chang-Diaz, carrying the power-and-data-grapple fixture, at the end of the arm against the blue-and-white backdrop of Earth. Chang-Diaz is making a record-tying seventh space flight, but this is his first spacewalk. And judging by the chatter between him and rookie flier Perrin early in today's excursion, he's not yet so jaded as to ignore the view from inside his fishbowl helmet. "This is an amazing experience, I'll tell you," he marveled early on. A few moments later, he marveled some more. "This is amazing, I mean, incredible." "I have not seen much. It was dark when I went out," Perrin said. "Ah, the sunrise. Take some time to look at the sunrise. "OK." "Oh man!" "Franklin, Valeri (Korzun, the station commander) wants to know if you think it's more comfortable than the NBL (Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory)," robot arm operator Peggy Whitson called from inside the Destiny lab module. "Uh, yes. Tremendously, much more comfortable and much more beautiful," Chang-Diaz replied. "It's absolutely spectacular." "That's sunrise..." Perrin said a moment later. "Isn't that incredible?" "Yeah. With Endeavour in the background, it's glorious." A few moments after that, shuttle pilot Paul Lockhart asked Perrin for his status. "I'm on P6, hanging on the PFR and looking at the world." "Does it look good?" Chang-Diaz asked. "Isn't it amazing? What an incredible sight." "I'm hanging like a bat upside down, looking at the Earth." "Wow." 02:00 p.m., 06/09/02, Update: Grapple fixture installation complete Spacewalkers Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin completed the first objective of today's outing at 1:40 p.m., bolting a robot arm grapple fixture on the P6 solar array. The grapple fixture is needed next year so the station's Canadarm2 space crane can detach the P6 array and mount it on the left end of the station's main solar array truss. Perrin and Chang-Diaz now are working to remove a set of Russian debris shields from the shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay. The shields will be temporarily mounted on the station's hull. If all goes well, station astronaut Peggy Whitson and Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun will deploy the debris shields on the Zvezda command module in late July. Once the debris shields are in place, Chang-Diaz and Korzun will prepare the mobile base system for removal from the cargo bay. The MBS will be mounted on a small rail car Monday, serving as a mobile platform for Canadarm2. 04:00 p.m., 06/09/02, Update: Debris panels successfully installed Astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz and fellow spacewalker Philippe Perrin have completed work to temporarily stow Russian micrometeoroid debris shields on the hull of the international space station. The panels will be deployed over part of the Zvezda command module's hull during a spacewalk in late July by station engineer Peggy Whitson and Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun. A few minutes before 4 p.m., Chang-Diaz climbed off the end of the station arm to help Perrin prepare a robot arm attachment platform called the mobile base system for removal from the shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay. The platform will be attached to a small rail car Monday that's mounted on the forward face of the station's main solar array truss. The Canadarm2 spacecrane ultimately will be mounted on the attachment platform so it can move along the truss to various work sites. For today, however, the goal is simply to attach the Canadarm2 to a grapple fixture on the mounting platform to provide "keep alive" electrical power for its internal heaters. Whitson, operating the arm from inside the Destiny lab module, then will lift the platform from the cargo bay and maneuver it into thermally benign overnight park position near the truss-mounted rail car. It will be attached to the cart Monday. Today's spacewalk has been challenging for Whitson. Extremely tight clearances have been the order of the day with difficult arm positions required to maneuver Chang-Diaz into various orientations about the station. The work has gone smoothly, but it has been a stop-and-go affair, with Whitson taking her time to make sure the arm stays clear of station structure. 07:50 p.m., 06/09/02, Update: Spacewalk ends; mission status briefing Astronauts Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin began repressurizing the international space station's Quest airlock module at 6:41 p.m., officially ending a successful seven-hour 14-minute spacewalk. All of the objectives of the excursion were accomplished. "I'm really pleased to report we had a tremendous day on orbit," said space station flight director Rick LaBrode. "It couldn't have gone better." Said Tricia Mack, the lead spacewalk flight controller at the Johnson Space Center: "We had three major tasks and they all were performed flawlessly." This was the 39th space station assembly spacewalk, the 14th staged from the station itself and the seventh from the U.S. Quest airlock module. Chang-Diaz and Perrin are the 37th and 38th individuals to participate in a station assembly spacewalk. With today's spacewalk, 31 Americans, one Canadian, five Russian cosmonauts and one Frenchman have logged 243 hours and 41 minutes of spacewalk time in 39 ISS assembly spacewalks. Chang-Diaz and Perrin attached a robot arm grapple fixture to the station's current solar array truss so it eventually can be moved to its permanent location on the left-side of the station's currently unfinished main array truss. The astronauts also mounted six micrometeoroid debris panels on the station's hull that will be deployed in late July to help shield the Russian Zvezda command module from potentially dangerous impacts. Finally, Chang-Diaz and Perrin removed a half-dozen thermal blankets from the mobile base system, a robot arm mounting platform that will be attached to a small cart on the solar array truss Monday. The MBS will serve as a carrier for the station's robot arm, allowing the crane to be moved back and forth along the truss to continue its assembly. The spacewalk was timelined for six hours, but it ran more than an hour longer than expected. Space station engineer Peggy Whitson, operating the Canadarm2 space crane, faced tight clearances and challenging trajectories maneuvering the complex seven-joint arm and she took her time to make sure nothing went awry. "This was the first time the crew was driving this arm," LaBrode said. "So it's like you get behind the wheel of a brand new car, you're very cautious until you learn how it works. On top of that, a lot of our maneuvers, specifically the maneuver to the service module debris panel stowage location, the trajectories of the arm put us in very close proximity to the station's structure. So they were very methodical. They did a fabulous job monitoring their clearances. In addition, the arm experienced a few "singularities" along the way, LaBrode said, in which the control computer's knowledge of the precise orientation of a particular joint was briefly lost because of earlier maneuvers. "We got in a configuration where it was real challenging to get out and it took time," LaBrode said. "When you pile all of these things together, it just made for a little bit longer ops than we originally anticipated." =================================================================== MBS temporarily mounted on truss cart (06/10/02) 06:30 a.m., 06/10/02, Update: Astronauts awakened for MBS installation The Endeavour astronauts were awakened at 5:23 a.m. to begin the installation of a robot arm attachment platform that will allow the international space station's Canadarm2 space crane to ride a rail car along the lab's unfinished solar array truss. The mobile base system - MBS - attachment platform was grappled by the station arm and lifted from the shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay Sunday at the end of a spacewalk by Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin. Drawing "keep-alive" power from the arm, the MBS was positioned a few feet from the truss mobile transporter cart to allow temperatures between the two components to equalize. Today, starting around 8:08 a.m., outgoing station engineer Carl Walz and incoming Expedition 5 crew member Peggy Whitson will use Canadarm2 to drive the mobile base system close enough to the transporter for a powerful claw to engage, locking the two together. The procedure is expected to last about an hour. On Tuesday, Chang-Diaz and Perrin will stage a second spacewalk to complete the attachment, tightening four bolts and hooking up a half-dozen power and data cables. The MBS is critical to the assembly of the station's main solar array truss. The truss consists of a single segment at present, but it eventually will stretch some 356 feet. At each end of the truss, two sets of solar arrays will track the sun and deliver electrical power to the station through the central element of the truss, known as S-zero. The completed truss also will carry ammonia from inside the station to radiators mounted just inboard of the solar arrays to dissipate the heat generated by the station's electronics. But the truss could not be launched in one piece. Instead, NASA designed a multi-element beam that would be launched in sections and then assembled, one piece at a time, in orbit. The station's robot arm was used to install the first $600 million segment - S-zero - from its current perch on the hull of Destiny. But the arm is not long enough to attach any outboard truss segments. It was designed from the beginning to move along rails attached to the forward side of each major truss segment, carried by a $190 million U.S.-built motorized cart capable of creeping back and forth to various work sites. The robot arm, however, cannot attach itself directly to the railcar, or mobile transporter. It needs an interface that can provide power and route data and video back to operators inside the lab. Enter the Mobile Remote Servicer Base System, or MBS, provided by the Canadian Space Agency. The $254 million MBS is equipped with a pair of computers, weighs 3,300 pounds and measures 18.7 feet by 14.7 feet by 9.5 feet. It provides a latching mechanism to lock down major cargo elements - like truss sections - during movement along the solar array beam; a video system; a latch mechanism for smaller components; and four power, data and grapple fixtures, known as PDGFs, where the robot arm can attach itself. Once attached, the arm can handle components weighing up to 46,000 pounds. The arm currently is anchored to the Earth-facing side of Destiny's hull. After the MBS is installed, a lengthy series of tests is planned to verify its health. Only then, well after the shuttle's departure, will the Expedition 5 crew command the arm's free end to latch onto one of the MBS' power and data grapple fixtures. At that point, the other end of the arm will release the PDGF on Destiny's hull to complete the long-awaited "walk off" onto the mobile transporter. And that will clear the way for the August shuttle mission when the arm will be used to attach the first of the outboard truss sections. Here is an updated timeline of today's activities (in Eastern and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 05:23 AM...04...12...00...STS crew wakeup 05:53 AM...04...12...30...ISS crew wakeup 07:38 AM...04...14...15...ISS daily planning conference 08:08 AM...04...14...45...Mobile base system installation on truss transporter 08:08 AM...04...14...45...Leonardo cargo module transfer resumes 08:23 AM...04...15...00...Perrin exercises 08:58 AM...04...15...35...ISS: HDTV setup 09:08 AM...04...15...45...Chang-Diaz exercises 09:13 AM...04...15...50...Robot arm (RMS) powerdown 09:48 AM...04...16...25...Lockhart exercises 10:18 AM...04...16...55...Onufrienko exercises 11:18 AM...04...17...55...Walz exercises 11:28 AM...04...18...05...French media event with Cockrell, Perrin 12:03 PM...04...18...40...Cockrell exercises 12:18 PM...04...18...55...Bursch exercises 12:18 PM...04...18...55...ISS: Whitson exercises 12:48 PM...04...19...25...SAFER jetpack checkout 01:18 PM...04...19...55...Joint crew meal 02:13 PM...04...20...50...Change-of-command ceremony 02:28 PM...04...21...05...EVA-2: Procedures review 03:28 PM...04...22...05...Leonardo cargo module transfers resume 03:43 PM...04...22...20...Bursch exercises 04:00 PM...04...22...37...Mission status briefing on NASA TV 04:28 PM...04...23...05...Walz exercises 04:38 PM...04...23...15...Quest equipment lock prep 04:53 PM...04...23...30...Reboost operations 05:23 PM...05...00...00...EVA-2: Tools configured 06:08 PM...05...00...45...Onufrienko exercises 07:08 PM...05...01...45...ISS daily planning conference 09:23 PM...05...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins 09:10 a.m., 06/10/02, Update: Robot arm attachment platform mounted on mobile transporter Station astronauts Peggy Whitson and Carl Walz, operating the lab's Canadarm2 space crane, temporarily attached a robot arm attachment platform to a small rail car today that eventually will carry the arm back and forth along the station's solar array truss. The installation procedure was completed shortly around 9 a.m. when a mechanical claw on the attachment platform locked onto a capture bar atop the mobile transporter. "We've got a good ... capture," Walz reported at 9:13 a.m. This is strictly a temporary attachment and the Canadarm2 crane will remain attached to the mobile base system overnight to provide power to its heaters. The attachment procedure will be completed Tuesday during a spacewalk by Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin. They will tighten four large bolts and connect a half-dozen power and data/video cables to permanently attach the mobile base system to the transporter. But for today, the MBS work is complete and the astronauts will spend the rest of the day transferring supplies and equipment to and from the Leonardo cargo module carried into orbit by the shuttle Endeavour. A few minutes past 2 p.m. - the exact time is TBD - the station's outgoing Expedition 4 crew - commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Walz - will formally turn over the lab complex to their replacements, Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, Whitson and Sergei Treschev. The official handover occurred earlier in the mission, as soon as the Expedition 5 crew's Soyuz seatliners and pressure suits were transferred aboard. Today's ceremony is strictly a formality. 02:15 p.m., 06/10/02, Update: Change-of-command ceremony delayed by smoke alarm A formal change-of-command ceremony marking the transtion from the Expedition 4 crew to the lab's fifth set of full-time occupants was interrupted today by an errant smoke alarm in the Russian Zarya module. One of 10 smoke sensors in the module went off just as the command ceremony was getting underway. The station's Russian crew members quickly determined nothing was wrong, speculating that dust stirred up by equipment transfers had triggered the alarm. But work to verify the integrity of the sensors and to reset the system forced the crew to put the change-of-command ceremony on hold. We will provide coverage of the event whenever it takes place. 08:15 p.m., 06/10/02, Update: Formal change-of-command ceremony Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko turned over the international space station to Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun and his two crewmates today in a formal change-of-command ceremony marking the arrival of the station's fifth full-time crew. After an interruption to check and reset an errant smoke alarm in the Russian Zarya module, the combined crews videotaped the ceremony and downlinked it to mission control. "I'm happy to say the material and working condition of the lab, including the robotics workstation and the robotics system, is in excellent condition and soon to be even better," said outgoing U.S. flight engineer Daniel Bursch. "Good luck to Expedition 5 and I hope your journey is as rewarding and fulfilling as it was for me." Expedition 4 crewmate Carl Walz told the incoming station fliers "the airlock systems are all operating very well and also the Soyuz (lifeboat) is in great shape. We wish you all the best on your voyage here in the future." Onufrienko then wished Mir-veteran Korzun good luck, saying "now, I'm ready to be relieved." "I relieve you of command, sir," Korzun replied. "And I want to tell you for us, it will be a good time and we will be very happy to repeat the same phrase as the previous crew. But most of all, we hope we can add something, S1 and P1." He was referring to a pair of huge solar array truss segments that will be delivered to the station during his crew's tenure. With those comments, someone rang the ship's bell in the Destiny laboratory module and the two crews exchanged hugs and handshakes. Onufrienko, Walz and Bursch were launched to the station Dec. 5. Assuming an on-time landing aboard the shuttle Endeavour on June 17, the Expedition 4 crew will have logged 193 days 17 hours and 20 minutes off the planet, a new U.S. space endurance record. Korzun and his two crewmates, NASA biochemist Peggy Whitson and cosmonaut Sergei Treschev, plan to remain aboard the outpost until mid October when they will be replaced by a fresh crew. The space station has been continuously manned by three-person crews since Nov. 2, 2000. As of today, that works out to 585 straight days. Today's change-of-command ceremony was strictly a formality. Korzun and company have been officially in charge since Friday. That's when the custom seatliners and pressure suits would need for an emergency descent to Earth in the station's Soyuz lifeboat were transferred from Endeavour to the station. The official start of the Expedition 5's tenure aboard the station was logged at 6:55 p.m. Friday. Whitson is sleeping in the U.S. Destiny laboratory module while her two Russian crewmates are bunking in a pair of staterooms in the Zvezda command module at the other end of the station. For his part, Korzun downplays the significance of serving as commander of the international space station. "You know, what does it mean, 'commander?' My main duty to do science experiments and not only science, replace equipment, fix some equipment and a lot of things," he said in a NASA interview. "Approximately 40% of my activity, it will be science experiments. ... I hope results of these experiments will help the people on the ground." But when asked to name the most significant contribution his crew might make, he said his goal was to inspire the youth of the world. "There is a more important romantic reason, because the people on the ground know about station, and the children want to be cosmonauts, astronauts, to fly in space, and this is dream for them," he said. "I understand government and the country maybe measure money, evaluate how many money, money they put in the space program, but nobody calculate what we will have in the future when the people, when the new generation, will think about it. And I think this is good dream for children now." =================================================================== MBS permanentaly attached during second spacewalk (06/11/02) 06:30 a.m., 06/11/02, Update: Astronauts gear up for second spacewalk Franklin Chang-Diaz and French astronaut Philippe Perrin are preparing for a second spacewalk today to complete the installation of a robot arm attachment platform atop a rail car mounted on the international space station's unfinished solar array truss. The planned six-and-a-half-hour excursion is scheduled to begin around 11:08 a.m. Only one of nine solar array truss segments currently are in place. To add additional segments, the station's Canadarm2 space crane must be able to move back and forth along the truss to reach outboard attachment points. To make that possible, rails run along the forward face of each truss segment, allowing a motorized cart to move the crane about. For the arm to mount itself on the cart, however, a sophisticated platform known as the MBS must be attached to serve as an interface. The $254 million MBS is equipped with a pair of computers, weighs 3,300 pounds and measures 18.7 feet by 14.7 feet by 9.5 feet. It provides a latching mechanism to lock down major cargo elements - like truss sections - during movement along the solar array beam; a video system; a latch mechanism for smaller components; and four power, data and grapple fixtures, known as PDGFs, where the robot arm can attach itself. Once attached, the arm can handle components weighing up to 46,000 pounds. Station astronaut Peggy Whitson, operating Canadarm2, temporarily locked the the MBS down on the truss cart Monday. Today, Chang-Diaz and Perrin will finish the job. First, the astronauts will connect four video/data cables and two electrical power lines between the mobile transporter and the MBS. Ground engineers then will power up the MBS through the transporter and verify continuity. Next, Perrin and Chang-Diaz will deploy the MBS cargo grapple fixture and lock it in place before tightening up four main bolts needed to complete the structural attachment of the MBS to the mobile transporter. Once the bolts are torqued down, ground controllers will command the claw that initially held the MBS in place to retract. The astronauts will wrap up the spacewalk by repositioning the MBS camera to its operational location and stowing a set of emergency cables that could be used to provide power to the station's robot arm in the event of a malfunction that stalled the mobile transporter between work site power sockets. While today's spacewalk is going on, station astronauts not directly involved in supporting the EVA will continue work to unload the Leonardo cargo module and to repack it with no-longer-needed equipment and other material. A mission status briefing is planned for 6:30 p.m. Here is an updated timeline of today's activities as uplinked to the crew from mission control (in Eastern and mission elapsed time): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 05:23 AM...05...12...00...STS/ISS crew wakeup 06:23 AM...05...13...00...EVA-2: Preparations begin 06:53 AM...05...13...30...ISS daily planning conference 07:18 AM...05...13...55...Airlock 10.2 psi depress 07:38 AM...05...14...15...Handover activities (continues all day) 08:08 AM...05...14...45...Cockrell, Walz exercise 09:08 AM...05...15...45...MPLM transfers resume 09:13 AM...05...15...50...EVA-2: Spacesuit purge 09:18 AM...05...15...55...Airlock repressurized to 14.7 psi 09:28 AM...05...16...05...EVA-2: Oxygen pre-breathe 10:28 AM...05...17...05...EVA-2: Airlock depressurization 11:13 AM...05...17...50...EVA-2: Airlock egress and setup 11:23 AM...05...18...00...Bursch exercises 11:28 AM...05...18...05...EVA-2: MT/MBS umbilicals mated 11:28 AM...05...18...05...MBS powerdown 12:53 PM...05...19...30...STS/ISS meal 12:58 PM...05...19...35...EVA-2: POA deploy 02:18 PM...05...20...55...EVA-2: MBS bolts 03:08 PM...05...21...45...Walz, Whitson exercise 03:33 PM...05...22...10...EVA-2: MBS camera deploy 04:03 PM...05...22...40...Onufrienko exercises 04:18 PM...05...22...55...EVA-2: MSS cable install 04:38 PM...05...23...15...EVA-2: Clean up 05:03 PM...05...23...40...Bursch exercises 05:08 PM...05...23...45...EVA-2: Airlock ingress 05:23 PM...06...00...00...ISS: Maneuver arm to EVA-3 wrist joint R&R position 05:38 PM...06...00...15...EVA-2: Airlock repressurization 06:30 PM...06...01...07...Mission status briefing 07:08 PM...06...01...45...ISS daily planning conference 09:23 PM...06...04...00...STS/ISS crew sleep begins 11:20 a.m., 06/11/02, Update: Spacewalk begins Floating in the international space station's Quest airlock module, astronauts Franklin Chang-Diaz and Frenchman Philippe Perrin switched their spacesuits to internal battery power at 11:20 a.m. to officially begin a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk. The goal of today's excursion is to complete the attachment of a sophisticated robot arm mounting platform that eventually will allow the station's Canadarm2 crane to ride a motorized cart back and forth along the lab's main solar array truss. See the 6:30 a.m. status report below for additional details. 01:40 p.m., 06/11/02, Update: Power cables attached Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin have successfull connected the primary power cables between the international space station's mobile transporter and the robot arm mounting platform they are attaching during today's spacewalk. While ground engineers power up the mobile base system, or MBS, for a series of tests, Chang-Diaz and Perrin will deploy and lock down a cargo mounting fixture. The cargo mounting point, virtually identical to the latching end effector of the station's robot arm, eventually will be used to anchor large components for transport to installation sites along the station's solar array truss. 03:20 p.m., 06/11/02, Update: Spacewalkers wrap up MBS installation Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin have completed work to firmly attach a robot arm mounting platform atop a small rail car on the international space station's unfinished solar array truss. Four hours into a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk, the astronauts have finished their major objectives and are wrapping up a final bit of work to tie off loose cabling before returning to the station's Quest airlock module. 06:10 p.m., 06/11/02, Update: Successful spacewalk ends; endurance record on tap; mission status briefing Astronauts Franklin Chang-Diaz and Frenchman Philippe Perrin began repressurizing the international space station's Quest airlock module at 4:20 p.m. today, officially ending a five-hour spacewalk. The astronauts completed their work a full hour and a half ahead of schedule. On another front, two of the space station's returning crew members - Carl Walz and Daniel Bursch - are closing in on a new U.S. space endurance record. At 10:19:38 p.m. this evening, they will exceed astronaut Shannon Lucid's record of 188 days and four hours off planet, a mark set in 1996 during an extended stay aboard the Russian Mir space station. Bursch, Walz and Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko were launched to the international space station Dec. 5. Assuming an on-time touchdown aboard Endeavour next Monday, they will have logged 193 days 17 hours and 20 minutes in space, setting a new U.S. endurance record in the process. Today's spacewalk by Chang-Diaz and Perrin was a textbook affair with no problems of any significance. The astronauts successfully bolted a $254 million robot arm mounting platform in place atop a motorized cart on the station's unfinished solar array truss; hooked up data and video cables between the platform and the mobile transporter; mounted a video camera in its permanent location; and deployed a cargo grapple fixture. "It could not have gone any better," said space station flight director Rick LaBrode. "With the permanent mating of the mobile base system to the mobile transporter, we've added another piece to the ISS city in the sky. So things are continuing to go very, very well. The ISS and shuttle systems are in great shape, we're well ahead of the game in transfer ops (and) both crews are really working like a well-oiled machine." Assuming subsequent testing goes well, the station's on-board crew will move the lab's $600 million Canadarm2 space crane to the mobile transporter platform after the shuttle Endeavour departs. The robot arm currently is attached to the Destiny laboratory module, but it must end up on the mobile transport to continue assembly of the solar array truss. With the completion of today's spacewalk, the mobile transporter and the robot arm interface platform are ready for the arm's long-anticipated walk-off from the lab module. "I want to say a few words for the Canadians," Perrin radioed as he prepared to re-enter the airlock. "They have put together a wonderful piece of hardware and everything worked fantastic. I'm very proud of the MBS. Thanks to all who worked on that program." "You guys did a great job today," Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk replied from mission control. "We couldn't have done it without the team on the ground, but certainly not without the team up there on orbit as well. Your professionalism and skill really showed through. Thank you from Canada." Ken Lord, deputy director of engineering and operations for the Canadian Space Agency, said today marked "a tremendous first for us." "The MBS is now firmly located, powered and supported by the space station," he said. "Over the next few days and weeks, the MBS will be checked out, will be fully tested and we hope to see, at the end of June or early July, the formal step off of Canadarm2 from the station to the MBS where it will then be available to support the rest of the assembly of the international station." Today's spacewalk was the 40th devoted to space station assembly, the 15th staged from the space station and the eighth to use the U.S. Quest airlock module. All told, 31 U.S. astronauts, one Canadian, 1 Frenchman and five Russian cosmonauts have logged 248 hours and 41 minutes of spacewalk time building the international lab complex. Chang-Diaz and Perrin plan a third and final spacewalk Thursday to replace the wrist-joint of the Canadarm2 space crane. Between now and then, engineers on the ground will be troubleshooting a problem with the Quest airlock module's hard-wired spacesuit power supply. Earlier today, engineers noticed that the umbilicals used to supply electricity to the spacesuits worn by Chang-Diaz and Perrin suddenly tripped off. When the spacewalkers returned to the airlock today, they were told to keep their suits on battery power throughout the repressurization process. Spacewalkers normally use the umbilicals to power their suits until just before the leave the airlock. When they return, they hook back up to station power before working through the airlock repressurization procedure. Lead spacewalk planner Tricia Mack said today if the problem is not resolved by Thursday, the astronauts will take two sets of batteries into the airlock with them. They'll use one set for preliminary work and then switch to a fresh set of batteries just before exiting the airlock. That will ensure a full charge at the beginning of the excursion. =================================================================== Crew news conference (06/12/02) 07:30 a.m., 06/12/02, Update: Astronauts hustle to repack cargo module The combined crews of the international space station and the shuttle Endeavour are gearing up for another busy day in space today, focusing on supplies and equipment transfers to and from the Leonardo cargo module and rigging their gear for a third and final spacewalk Thursday. At 10:58 a.m., pilot Paul Lockhart, Philippe Perrin, Franklin Chang-Diaz and Daniel Bursch will participate in round-robin interviews with three news organizations. A traditional joint crew news conference with all 10 shuttle-station astronauts is planned for 3:53 p.m. Crew sleep begins at 8:53 p.m. Overnight, departing station astronauts Carl Walz and Daniel Bursch set a new U.S. single-flight space endurance record, beating the old mark of 188 days and four hours set by Shannon Lucid aboard the Russian Mir space station in 1996. Assuming an on-time landing aboard Endeavour on Monday, the station astronauts will set a new single flight record of 193 days and 17 hours. Walz, making his fifth space flight, also took another endurance record away from Lucid today, becoming NASA's most experienced astronaut with more than 223 days in space over five flights. The world record belongs to cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev, who chalked up 748 days in space over three flights. Here is an updated timeline of today's activities as uplinked to the crew from mission control (in Eastern and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 05:23 AM...06...12...00...STS crew wakeup 05:53 AM...06...12...30...ISS crew wakeup 07:23 AM...06...14...00...ISS daily planning conference 08:08 AM...06...14...45...MPLM transfers resume 08:08 AM...06...14...45...Handover activities 08:33 AM...06...15...10...Middeck transfers resume 08:43 AM...06...15...20...Chang-Diaz exercises 09:08 AM...06...15...45...Reboost operations 09:08 AM...06...15...45...Walz exercises 10:13 AM...06...16...50...Quest equipment lock prep 10:23 AM...06...17...00...Onufrienko exercises 10:28 AM...06...17...05...Handover activities 10:58 AM...06...17...35...PAO event: PLT, MS1, MS2, MS4, Whitson 11:18 AM...06...17...55...Lockhart exercises 11:18 AM...06...17...55...EVA-3: Tool config 12:18 PM...06...18...55...SAFER checkout 12:23 PM...06...19...00...Walz exercises 12:23 PM...06...19...00...ISS: Whitson exercises 01:23 PM...06...20...00...Joint crew meal 02:23 PM...06...21...00...EVA-3: Procedures review 02:38 PM...06...21...15...Onufrienko exercises 02:38 PM...06...21...15...Cockrell exercises 03:23 PM...06...22...00...Joint crew photo 03:53 PM...06...22...30...Joint crew news conference 04:38 PM...06...23...15...MPLM transfers resume 05:00 PM...06...23...37...Mission status briefing on NASA TV 05:38 PM...07...00...15...Bursch exercises 06:38 PM...07...01...15...ISS daily planning conference 08:53 PM...07...03...30...STS/ISS crew sleep begins 05:30 p.m., 06/12/02, Update: Long-duration astronauts need people skills To understand what's it's like to make a long-duration voyage aboard the international space station, imagine taking a really long trip in a car. And then imagine never getting a chance to stop or step outside, even if your traveling companion is driving you up the wall. "I don't care who you fly with, it could be your best friend, there are going to be times where you get on each other's nerves," said station astronaut Daniel Bursch, wrapping up a record 194-day stay in space. "That happens, and you find a way to deal with it, whether its exercise or be by yourself or work on a hobby." Bursch, Carl Walz and Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko were launched to the station Dec. 5. They originally planned to return to Earth in May, but their flight was extended a month and a half to give ground crews time to develop plans to replace a faulty joint in the station's robot arm. That work will be carried out Thursday during a spacewalk by Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin. Assuming an on-time landing aboard the shuttle Endeavour next Monday, Walz and Bursch will set a new U.S. space endurance record of 194 days. The old mark of 188 days, set by astronaut Shannon Lucid in 1996 aboard the Mir space station, was broken last night. "It's certainly not something that we set out to do, to break a record like this," Bursch said today during a news conference. "We all miss our families, but we're all really happy everything's gone really well and we'll be happiest if we know folks on the ground are proud of what we've done." Said Walz: "I agree with Dan, this wasn't something that we set out to do. But I think we were able to accomplish all of our objectives and more during our flight. It's been a little bit tougher on our families and we really have to thank them for hanging in there during this long flight. They've really done a great job and we're really looking forward to getting back to our families." All three said they were also looking forward to eating pizza after six months in space. "What about me? I want the same, maybe twice," Onufrienko said. Bursch said the biggest challenge facing astronauts on long-duration voyages is psychological, not physical deterioration. "Without a shadow of a doubt in my opinion, the biggest challenge would be mental and psychological, overcoming just being up here for that amount of time," he said. "If you think about taking a family trip, whether it's with your spouse or with your family, and never getting out of the car, you can imagine some problems are going to crop up no matter how well you get along," he said. "If you think of it a lot like a marriage, in a marriage there are going to be problems, whether it's mis-communication or not enough communication, it's very similar to that." Revision G of the NASA television schedule is posted below. Endeavour's landing time has changed by an orbit or so and it's now targeted for 1 p.m. Monday. Assuming that time holds up, Bursch and Walz will have logged 193 days 18 hours and 41 minutes off the planet. =================================================================== Spacewalkers replace wrist joint in station arm (06/13/02) 07:15 a.m., 06/13/02, Update: Astronauts set for critical robot arm repair Astronauts Franklin Chang-Diaz and Frenchman Philippe Perrin are gearing up for a third and final spacewalk today, a critical seven-hour operation to replace a broken joint in the international space station's $600 million robot arm. The planned seven-hour spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 10:43 a.m. "Good morning, Alpha, it's great to talk to you today," astronaut Susan Helms radioed the station crew from mission control. "It's going to be a great EVA and robotics day and we're looking forward to performing some surgery on the arm." "Yeah, I think these guys up here are ready to go, too," replied station engineer and arm operator Peggy Whitson. The Canadarm2 spacecrane is critical to the continued assembly of the space station. But it is suffering from what amounts to a broken wrist. During today's spacewalk, Chang-Diaz and Perrin will unbolt the arm's "hand" and then replace the faulty wrist-roll joint, about the size of a 17-inch computer monitor, with a spare carried up aboard the shuttle Endeavour. After the arm's hand, also known as a "latching end effector," or LEE, is re-attached, ground controllers will carry out a series of tests to make sure the patient is healthy. If so, Chang-Diaz and Perrin will end their spacewalk and return to the space station's Quest airlock module. If post-operative problems are encountered, the spacewalkers could be asked to bring the original wrist joint back inside the station for later re-attachment to the arm. But that's considered a very unlikely worst-case scenario. "It's true, this is a critical EVA, we need that arm working for the rest of station assembly," Perrin said Wednesday during a crew news conference. "But actually, it's a very simple EVA. It may be a little bit longer than the two others, but the first two EVAs prepared us very well and we feel extremely confident. The hardware is really well designed, thanks to the Canadian Space Agency, and we are fully confident." The near-term goal of space station assembly is to complete a huge truss that eventually will stretch some 350 feet, carrying the solar arrays and ammonia radiators and plumbing needed to keep the lab complex cool and electrically alive. To build the truss, the station's Canadarm2 space crane will be mounted atop a rail car that will creep along the beam to various work sites. The cart was carried into space already attached to the central element of the truss. Earlier this week, a mounting platform was attached to the cart. The cart will provide power to the arm and route video and data back to operators inside the station. But shortly after the space station remote manipulator system - SSRMS - robotic crane was installed last year, engineers discovered a subtle electronic glitch in the redundant circuitry used to control the movement of the arm's wrist-roll joint. For redundancy, independent electronic control systems are built into each of the arm's seven joints. In one of the two systems that can be used to control the wrist-roll joint, a malfunction can occur that prevents the release of brakes locking the joint in one position. That, in turn, can trigger an automatic shutdown, preventing controllers from using the arm even with the healthy avionics "string." After intensive troubleshooting, Canadian software engineers developed a computer programming patch that forces the arm's main computer to ignore the problem in the wrist-roll joint and not to order a shutdown before switching to the healthy avionics string. Before the most recent shuttle-station assembly mission in April, another patch was put in place that essentially told the arm's computer to ignore the joint entirely when working through the faulty avionics string. The wrist-roll joint works normally with the other control system, but NASA managers want full redundancy to protect against problems down the road. As it now stands, a failure in the healthy control system could shut the arm down, interrupting assembly operations. "Certainly for normal operations, for any of the build outboard of where we are now, we need a fully functional arm," said shuttle flight director Paul Hill. "The arm we have now is fully functional on (one) string but if we fail this string, that takes us down to either one degraded string or, depending on the failure, two degraded strings." And so, on March 20, station managers decided to add a third spacewalk to Endeavour's mission so Perrin and Chang-Diaz could replace the faulty wrist-roll joint. Launch was delayed a month to give engineers time to develop a payload bay mounting fixture for the replacement joint and to give the spacewalkers additional time to train. During today's outing, Perrin will ride on the end of the shuttle robot arm while Chang-Diaz free floats. First, the spacewalkers will put a thermal blanket around the arm's latching end effector - the LEE - the part of the arm that actually locks on to components and grapple fixtures. The arm then will be powered down and Perrin will disconnect the LEE's internal power cable. After loosening six expandable diameter fasteners, or EDFs, holding the 450-pound LEE onto the wrist-roll joint, the spacewalkers will remove the end effector and temporarily stow it on a nearby spacewalker foot restraint. The faulty wrist-roll will be removed in similar fashion, that is, after loosening six EDFs and disconnecting an internal power cable. The replacement joint, which measures about two feet by two feet and weighs some 220 pounds, will be installed by tightening the six EDFs with 25 foot pounds of torque each and making the single required electrical connection. That will clear the way for reattachment of the latching end effector. At that point, ground controllers plan to power the arm back up and begin a series of tests while Perrin and Chang-Diaz move the old wrist-roll joint from its temporary stowage point in the cargo bay to the fixture used to hold the new joint in place during launch. "We in EVA never like to think of our tasks as simple," said lead spacewalk planner Tricia Mack. "But it is a straightforward EVA if all the hardware works correctly. "I guess what's complex about it is the timing," she said. "We will be powering the arm up in between, after we remove the end effector and the wrist roll joint, when the crew's in the bay working and safely away from the work site, we will power the arm up to protect some of the components on it that would normally be without power. So there's a lot of commanding between the ground, the station crew and obviously the EVA crew. I wouldn't say it's simple, but you're right, as long as the hardware works it'll be pretty straightforward." And what will the crew do if one of the expandable diameter bolts fails to collapse when the spacewalkers loosen the central bolt? "We have a long list of contingencies we've trained for," Mack said. "If we have a faulty EDF, we are flying a spare. ... If the clevis and lug interface wouldn't come apart, we have a contingency plan - and I hate saying this because I know the Canadians don't like it - but we have a pry bar on the space station that we maybe could use to give it a little help coming apart." Five of the six EDFs in the latching end effector and the replacement wrist-roll joint must be fully engaged for normal arm operation. "It's going to be a long EVA, because we have a lot of bolts to deal with, unbolting and rebolting them," Perrin said before launch. "But as far as the hardware we need to change, it's pretty simple. "It looks like major surgery because we're going to take the end of the arm out and then swap the joint and then get the LEE back in place and we have to run against the clock and do everything in an orderly and timely fashion," he said. "It's going to be a long EVA, but I think quite simple. ... I feel very confident about the amount of training we've had." Here is an updated timeline of today's activities as uplinked to the crew from mission control (in Eastern and mission elapsed time): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04:53 AM...07...11...30...STS/ISS crew wakeup 05:53 AM...07...12...30...EVA-3: Preparations begin 06:23 AM...07...13...00...ISS daily planning conference 06:48 AM...07...13...25...Airlock depress to 10.2 psi 07:08 AM...07...13...45...ISS: Leonardo cargo module transfers resume 07:23 AM...07...14...00...Shuttle robot arm (RMS) powerup 08:08 AM...07...14...45...Cockrell exercises 08:38 AM...07...15...15...ISS: Handover activities 08:38 AM...07...15...15...Walz exercises 08:43 AM...07...15...20...EVA-3: Spacesuit purge 08:48 AM...07...15...25...Airlock repressurized to 14.7 psi 08:58 AM...07...15...35...EVA-3: Oxygen pre-breathe 09:58 AM...07...16...35...EVA-3: Airlock depressurization 10:43 AM...07...17...20...EVA-3: Airlock egress 10:58 AM...07...17...35...EVA-3: Station arm (SSRMS) "hand" removal removal 11:38 AM...07...18...15...Walz exercises 11:38 AM...07...18...15...ISS: Whitson exercises 12:38 PM...07...19...15...ISS meal 12:38 PM...07...19...15...EVA-3: SSRMS wrist-roll joint removal 01:23 PM...07...20...00...EVA-3: Replacement joint installation begins 01:38 PM...07...20...15...Handover activities 01:38 PM...07...20...15...Leonardo cargo module transfers resume 02:38 PM...07...21...15...EVA-3: SSRMS LEE ("hand") re-attachment begins 02:38 PM...07...21...15...Bursch exercises 02:53 PM...07...21...30...Leonardo cargo module racks configured 03:23 PM...07...22...00...EVA-3: Failed wrist joint stowed for return 03:38 PM...07...22...15...ISS: Joint checkout; CPA installation 03:38 PM...07...22...15...CPA installation 04:08 PM...07...22...45...EVA-3: Work site cleanup 04:38 PM...07...23...15...Onufrienko exercises 05:23 PM...08...00...00...EVA-3: Airlock ingress 05:38 PM...08...00...15...Bursch exercises 05:38 PM...08...00...15...EVA-3: Airlock repressurization 07:08 PM...08...01...45...ISS daily planning conference 08:53 PM...08...03...30...STS/ISS crew sleep begins 11:20 a.m., 06/13/02, Update: Robot arm repair spacewalk begins Astronauts Franklin Chang-Diaz and Frenchman Philippe Perrin switched their spacesuits to battery power at 11:16 a.m. today, officially beginning a planned seven-hour spacewalk to fix a broken wrist joint in the international space station's robot arm. The spacewalk began about a half-hour behind schedule because of problems with the radio in Chang-Diaz's spacesuit. This is the 41st spacewalk devoted to space station assembly, the 16th staged from the lab complex itself and the ninth to utilize the U.S. Quest airlock module. Going into today's excursion, 31 Americans, one Canadian, one Frenchman - Perrin - and five Russian cosmonauts had logged 248 hours and 41 minutes of spacewalk time putting the station together. 02:20 p.m., 06/13/02, Update: Faulty wrist joint removed Just before 2 p.m., Philippe Perrin and Franklin Chang-Diaz disconnected the "hand" of the international space station's robot arm and shortly thereafter, unbolted and removed the crane's faulty wrist-roll joint. The spacewalkers currently are working in the shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay to temporarily stow the failed joint before beginning work to attach its replacement. The arm's hand - known as the latching end effector, or LEE - is temporarily mounted on a work platform attached to the hull of the Destiny laboratory module. It took the spacewalkers longer than expected to set up their equipment before beginning the actual joint replacement work. As of this writing, they are running about an hour behind schedule. The actual joint replacement work has gone smoothly, but it's too soon to say how much lost time the spacewalkers might be able to make up. 04:00 p.m., 06/13/02, Update: New wrist joint in place Spacewalkers Philippe Perrin and Franklin Chang-Diaz have completed replacement of a faulty wrist joint in the international space station's robot arm. The astronauts had no problems bolting the new joint in place and re-attaching the arm's hand-like latching end effector, or LEE, to complete this critical bit of orbital surgery. "Houston, we're complete with this portion of the wrist-LEE installation," pilot Paul Lockhart reported just before 4 p.m. "Endeavour, we copy. Confirm that we have a go to continue," astronaut Mike Fossum called from Houston. "Roger. Both EV1 and 2 are clear, you have a go to power up the station arm." "OK, Endeavour, we copy," Fossum replied. "Time to wake up the patient and see how the arm's doing after surgery. By the way, we see per the timeline that you guys are right on. Nice job." Today's spacewalk got off to a slow start, with Perrin and Chang-Diaz falling an hour or so behind schedule setting up their tools and work platforms. But they have now made up virtually all of that lost time and are close to being back on schedule. 06:35 p.m., 06/13/02, Update: Robot arm's new wrist joint passes initial tests; spacewalk ends The new wrist joint installed on the international space station's $600 million robot arm today by spacewalkers Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin has passed an initial series of tests with flying colors. More tests are planned but so far, it appears the robot arm is fully functional and ready to support continued assembly of the space station. Chang-Diaz and Perrin, meanwhile, returned to the station's Quest airlock module and began repressurizing at 6:33 p.m. to officially wrap up a seven-hour 17-minute spacewalk, the third and final excursion planned for the shuttle Endeavour's mission. To celebrate, mission controllers beamed up a high-volume recording of the Eagles singing "Take It Easy," a tune pilot Paul Lockhart used to play for the spacewalkers at the end of underwater training runs in Houston. "Thank you very much," Perrin radioed. "This has been the best time of my life." With the conclusion of today's spacewalk - the 41st devoted to space station assembly - 31 Americans, one Canadian, one Frenchman - Perrin - and five Russian cosmonauts have now logged 255 hours and 58 minutes of spacewalk time building the international lab complex. The three spacewalks staged during Endeavour's mission totaled 19 hours and 31 minutes. 08:05 p.m., 06/13/02, Update: Canadian Space Agency managers pleased with successful robot arm repair For the Canadian Space Agency, which supplied the international space station's $600 million robot arm, "today has just been a banner day," said a robotics flight controller at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Today's success absolutely proves the Canadarm2 is fully maintainable on orbit," said Tim Braithwaite, lead robotics officer for the Canadian Space Agency. "Every piece of this arm can be replaced in space and brought back to the ground for repair. This is an attribute that sets it apart from the Canadarm shuttle arm, and this defines Canadarm2 as the most capable, flexible, unique robotics system ever deployed." "The last 14 months have been a period of tremendous growth for the international space station and Canadarm2 has been a critical part of many of the milestones along the way. Despite some glitches we had in the first few months after the arm arrived on station, we were able to press through that." Braithwaite said the Canadian Space Agency "simply could not be more pleased with the results from today and this whole flight. And we're really looking forward ... to continuing to build and maintain the space station." =================================================================== Leonardo cargo module reberthed aboard shuttle (06/14/02) 07:30 a.m., 06/14/02, Update: Crew gears up to re-stow Leonardo cargo module The Endeavour astronauts and their space station colleagues are closing out the Leonardo cargo module today in preparation for detaching the pressurized carrier from the lab complex and re-stowing it in the shuttle's cargo bay for return to Earth. Commander Kenneth Cockrell, operating the shuttle's robot arm, plans to grapple Leonardo around 12:18 p.m. After a break for lunch, the Italian-built module will be undocked from the Unity module's Earth-facing port around 2:48 p.m. and restowed in Endeavour's payload bay about 40 minutes later. At 5:28 p.m., spacewalkers Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin will field questions from CBS Radio and CNN Espanol. Crew sleep begins at 8:23 p.m. Here's an updated timeline of today's activities as uplinked from mission control (in Eastern and mission elapsed time): DAY/EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 05:23 AM...08...12...00...STS crew wakeup 05:23 AM...08...12...00...ISS crew wakeup 07:03 AM...08...13...40...ISS daily planning conference 07:33 AM...08...14...10...Spacesuit prepped for transfer 07:38 AM...08...14...15...Leonardo cargo module transfers resume 07:38 AM...08...14...15...Handover activities 07:38 AM...08...14...15...HDTV operations 08:33 AM...08...15...10...Reboost operations 09:08 AM...08...15...45...Leonardo cargo module egress 09:08 AM...08...15...45...Perrin exercises 09:23 AM...08...16...00...Leonardo cargo module deactivation 09:38 AM...08...16...15...Chang-Diaz exercises 09:43 AM...08...16...20...Vestibule configured for demate 10:13 AM...08...16...50...Cockrell exercises 10:38 AM...08...17...15...Bursch exercises 11:13 AM...08...17...50...Vestibule depressurization 11:33 AM...08...18...10...Sh;uttle robot arm (RMS) powerup 12:18 PM...08...18...55...RMS grapples Leonardo cargo module 12:38 PM...08...19...15...Joint crew meal 01:18 PM...08...19...55...ISS: Node 1 CBM demate 01:38 PM...08...20...15...Spacewalk tools transferred and stowed 02:48 PM...08...21...25...Leonardo cargo module unberthed 02:53 PM...08...21...30...Walz exercises 03:08 PM...08...21...45...Whitson exercises 03:28 PM...08...22...05...Lockhart exercises 03:28 PM...08...22...05...Leonardo cargo module berthed in cargo bay 04:08 PM...08...22...45...Onufrienko exercises 04:18 PM...08...22...55...RMS ungrapples Leonardo cargo module 04:28 PM...08...23...05...Rendezvous laptops setup 04:30 PM...08...23...07...Mission status briefing on NASA TV 04:33 PM...08...23...10...RMS powerdown 04:48 PM...08...23...25...Rendezvous tools checkout 05:28 PM...09...00...05...CBS Radio/CNN Espanol crew interviews 06:33 PM...09...01...10...ISS daily planning conference 08:23 PM...09...03...00...Crew sleep begins 04:50 p.m., 06/14/02, Update: Leonardo module returned to shuttle; engineers troubleshoot robot arm software glitch The Canadian Space Agency and its major robotics contractor are troubleshooting a software glitch that is preventing the international space station's $600 million robot arm from powering up normally when drawing electricity from a new attachment platform. But engineers say they believe a simple programming "patch" will fix the problem and that the Canadarm2 crane will be ready to "walk off" the Destiny lab module and onto its mobile base system attachment platform on the station's main solar array truss on schedule around July 1. "There is growing confidence this is a software problem, it's something that we can easily resolve with a software patch," said shuttle flight director Paul Hill. Engineers believe the problem is the result of a computer timing issue in which a check to make sure the arm is powering up normally comes before the power-up process is complete. As a result, the arm's main computer believes there is a problem and stops the activation procedure. Hill said a software patch to insert a delay into the startup check should be loaded within the next few weeks, in plenty of time for upcoming arm work to continue as planned. "This really is a speed bump, software patch and all," Hill said. Up in space today, French astronaut Philippe Perrin, assisted by shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell, used Endeavour's robot arm to detach the Leonardo cargo module from the international space station's Unity module. He then maneuvered it back into the shuttle's cargo bay for return to Earth. The process began around 3:18 p.m. and took about an hour to complete. If all goes well, Endeavour will undock from the space station Saturday at 10:32 a.m., setting the stage for return to Earth Monday. "We've pretty well wrapped up the docked mission now," Hill said. "The logistics module is back in the payload bay and the crew is finishing up some fine details, putting things away in both spacecraft and getting ready for undocking. "The crew will say their final farewells tomorrow, closing the hatch around 7:30 Houston time (8:30 a.m. EDT) and undocking about two hours later. ... Tomorrow's day will end for both crews about the same, with some much-deserved rest time." The $150 million Leonardo, also known as a multi-purpose logistics module, was launched to the station aboard Endeavour more fully loaded than any of the four previous MPLM flights to the outpost. Fifteen of 16 internal stowage racks were occupied with supplies, food, clothing, spare parts, new computers and other gear. Leonardo also carried a science rack provided by the European Space Agency called the Microgravity Science Glovebox. The glovebox is a sealed enclosure with reach-in gloves that gives station scientists an isolated environment in which to safely manipulate fluids, flames and other toxic materials. Some 1,500 pounds of science gear were unloaded during Endeavour's visit, along with 2,500 pounds of science support hardware. All told, Leonardo carried some 5,600 pounds of cargo and supplies to the station. Getting the module unloaded was difficult enough. But the astronauts and cosmonauts also had to repack it with no-longer-needed equipment, trash, packing foam and other gear that must be returned to Earth. "We have a very full MPLM, with 15 of the 16 rack spots taken up and with hopes of filling it to 90 percent capacity for return, which will unload sort of a backlog of excess supplies and equipment on board space station that really needs to be removed," Cockrell said before launch. Revision I of the NASA television schedule is posted below, along with a detailed undocking timeline. 06:15 p.m., 06/14/02, Update: Spacewalkers discuss life in orbit For Franklin Chang-Diaz, blasting off aboard the shuttle Endeavour for a record-tying seventh space flight was all in a day's work. Taking his first spacewalk was another matter entirely. Asked if the experience was worth the wait, the Costa Rica-born astronaut said "Oh, absolutely, every minute of it." "We still wake up with smiles on our faces even though we're tired," he said, floating in the station's Quest airlock module with fellow spacewalker Philippe Perrin. "It was a beautiful experience, it was for me, overcoming, especially the first EVA we did, when I was riding on the arm and got to see just a huge panorama of the world. It was to me an overcoming experience, I could hardly contain the emotions." During their third and final spacewalk Thursday, Chang-Diaz and Perrin replaced the wrist joint in the station's $600 million robot arm, a critical piece of surgery that had to go well to permit continued assembly of the orbital outpost. "It was a little bit challenging," Perrin told CBS Radio today. "We had to deal with things we did not expect. It was a long EVA, it took more than seven hours, which is a long, long time to spend in the suit, very tiring. So it was quite challenging. "We could have expected better, but we also could have expected much worse, because we were doing major surgery on the arm. After you take the arm apart, you better (be able to) put it together, otherwise the station could not continue the assembly sequence." At one point during one of his three spacewalks, Chang-Diaz told mission controllers it was difficult to find his way about in orbital darkness. "I found that to be one of the biggest learning components that is not really reproduced well in the training," he said. "That is, the station is such a large spacecraft with so many appendages and directions that you have to think in a three-dimensional sense without reference to gravity at all. "When we train in the water, we always have (an awareness of) the direction of gravity. It is impossible to eliminate that from your senses," he said. "And here, that does not exist anymore, so you have to rely entirely on visual cues. And of course when it's dark, you have very limited visibility. ... So it is easy to become disoriented and we take great pains to understand the road and have a clear roadmap to go from point A to point B." During Endeavour's return to Earth Monday, Perrin will be strapped in on the shuttle's lower deck, along with the station's returning crew members. Expedition 5 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz were launched to the station Dec. 5. When they land Monday, they will set a new U.S. endurance record of 194 days. All three will make the return to Earth resting on their backs in cushioned recumbent seats. Perrin will be sitting with them on the lower deck to provide assistance if needed. "My duty there is to make them as comfortable as we can before we enter the atmosphere and then as soon as we land and the wheels stop, I need to be able to help them if they don't feel well, or give them some water, very basic things," Perrin said. "My role would be very important in case of an emergency. If we had to, for some reason, bail out of the orbiter or do anything fancy, I would have to take them out of the orbiter because they would not be able to walk out." NASA managers currently are re-assessing the long-range goals of the space station project. Plans to increase crew size to six or seven, which would include full-time fliers from other partner nations, are on hold pending completion of budget and technical reviews. For his part, Chang-Diaz said it is "essential" to get astronauts representing the station's partner nations on board at some point. "The space program has become a world wide activity and the merging of all these nations together, I think, in a very clear way contributes to peace and the understanding of nations. "We have brought people from many different backgrounds into space and I think the environment they are beginning to see, as they view the whole planet from the vantage of orbital altitude, creates this sense of wholeness and (a) planetary sense rather than a very nationalistic or very narrow view of how society ought to be. So I think the space program brings along with it not only the technical advances but also the social changes that are going to improve the quality of life on the planet." =================================================================== Shuttle undocks from space station (06/15/02) 06:40 a.m., 06/15/02, Update: Astronauts gear up to undock from station The Endeavour astronauts and the international space station's new crew are working through their undocking timeline this morning, preparing for a farewell ceremony before the shuttle crew's departure at 10:32 a.m. "It's basically a reversal of the process of what we did when we docked," shuttle pilot Paul Lockhart said in a NASA interview. "When we docked, we came together and then we had to go through a series of steps in order to attach the two pieces together. And then we had to go through a series of steps to open up all the hatches. Well, we've got to reverse that (today). We've got to start closing hatches, equalize pressures, and so forth. And then we have to actually go through the process that will separate the orbiter from the station." Lockhart, shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell, Franklin Chang-Diaz, Philippe Perrin and the returning station crew - Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz - will bid the station's new crew farewell within the hour. Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, Peggy Whitson and Sergei Treschev plan to remain aboard the station until mid October when they will be replaced by the lab's sixth full-time crew. In a morning tagup with space station mission control, Bursch took a moment to bid farewell to Expedition 2 astronaut Susan Helms, who has been handling overnight CAPCOM chores during Endeavour's mission. Helms, an Air Force colonel, is resigning from NASA this summer to take on duties at Air Force Space Command in Colorado. "We realize that today is your last shift in MCC and we would just like to express our sincere thanks and gratitude and also express our congratulations on just a wonderful, terrific career you've had at NASA," Bursch radioed. "We wish you the best of luck out in Colorado Springs and we'll miss you very much." Said Walz: "It's been great working with you. ... Thanks for all your great tips for life on station, it really helped a lot." Helms is a veteran of five space missions, logging more than 206 days in space and eight hours and 56 minutes of spacewalk time. With Lockhart at the controls, Endeavour is scheduled to undock from the international space station at 10:32 a.m. Lockhart will guide the shuttle to a point about 450 feet directly in front of the station. He then will commence a lap-and-a-quarter fly around, looping over, behind, below and back in front of the lab complex before firing jets to leave the area for good around 12:16 p.m. "I liken a little bit of this to air-to-air refueling in aircraft," he said. "The two vehicles themselves are moving at a high rate of speed, but they're moving real slow to each other. But it's never stable. In other words, it's not like this one vehicle is parked and this vehicle is parked. It's always a constant maneuvering between the two. "When you dock and when you undock, it's the same thing. You get a separation, but immediately, you have orbital mechanics effects start to take effect. If I wasn't to do any other inputs, once we started to separate the orbiter ... would start to climb. So I have to keep making inputs in order to maintain the axis that I want to separate on. "I'll fly out to about 450 feet, which takes about 45 minutes or so, because we move away at a very slow rate of about 0.15 feet per second. And that's just to maintain safety. But it's also because we're concerned about impingement of the shuttle reaction control system, the thrusters. We don't want to plume or have any of the gases from that hit part of the critical parts of the station. "So we'll move out to 450 feet at a slow rate and then at 450 feet, I'll begin to fly the orbiter around the station. Maintaining this 400 feet, between 400 and 500 feet, I'll actually fly a 360 (degree) circle. The whole idea there is to, as we separate, start taking pictures of the ... station as we separate. "It's not just because we're taking pictures because it's something neat to look at, (which it is!) but because we have to document the condition that the station is in. They'll use our pictures and look at previous pictures and the ones subsequent, and that way they can keep track of any damage to shields from micrometeorites and things of this nature." Here is a detailed timeline of today's activities as uplinked to the crew from mission control. This timeline includes highlights from the detailed undocking timeline posted below (in Eastern and mission elapsed time): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 04:23 AM...09...11...00...STS crew wakeup 04:53 AM...09...11...30...ISS crew wakeup 05:33 AM...09...12...10...Cockrell exercises 06:03 AM...09...12...40...Perrin exercises 06:23 AM...09...13...00...ISS daily planning conference 06:33 AM...09...13...10...Lockhart exercises 06:38 AM...09...13...15...Spacesuit transfer 07:33 AM...09...14...10...Farewell 07:53 AM...09...14...30...Egress and hatch closure 07:53 AM...09...14...30...Bursch exercises 08:03 AM...09...14...40...ISS: Whitson exercises 08:23 AM...09...15...00...Walz exercises 08:23 AM...09...15...00...ODS vestibule leak check 08:53 AM...09...15...30...Onufrienko exercises 09:08 AM...09...15...45...Group B computer powerup 09:23 AM...09...16...00...Maneuver to undocking attitude 09:38 AM...09...16...15...Undocking timeline begins 10:23 AM...09...17...00...PMA-2 configured for undocking 10:32 AM...09...17...09...UNDOCKING 10:36 AM...09...17...13...Range: 50 feet; reselect -X jets 10:39 AM...09...17...16...Range: 75 feet; low-Z jets 11:18 AM...09...17...55...Range: 450 feet; begin flyaround 11:18 AM...09...17...55...ISS crew meal 11:30 AM...09...18...07...Shuttle directly above ISS (-Rbar) 11:41 AM...09...18...18...Shuttle directly behind ISS (-Vbar) 11:46 AM...09...18...23...Noon 11:53 AM...09...18...30...Shuttle directly below ISS (+Rbar) 12:04 PM...09...18...41...Shuttle directly in front of ISS (+Vbar) 12:16 PM...09...18...53...Final separation burn 12:16 PM...09...18...53...Shuttle directly above ISS (-Rbar) 12:18 PM...09...18...55...PMA-2 depressurized 12:18 PM...09...18...55...Group B computer powerdown 12:18 PM...09...18...55...RMS powerdown 12:18 PM...09...18...55...ISS off duty time begins 12:33 PM...09...19...10...STS crew meal 01:18 PM...09...19...55...STS off duty time begins 01:38 PM...09...20...15...ISS daily planning conference 02:33 PM...09...21...10...ISS: PMA-2 leak check 03:08 PM...09...21...45...ISS crew sleep begins 08:23 PM...10...03...00...STS crew sleep begins 08:30 a.m., 06/15/02, Update: Shuttle, station crews bid farewel; hatches closed The international space station's departing crew bid their replacements farewell today, closing a final hatch between the two spacecraft at 8:23 a.m. A formal farewell ceremony occurred a few minutes earlier, but it took place while the station-shuttle complex was out of contact with mission control. Videotape of the ceremony will be downlinked and shown on NASA television later this morning. In the meantime, undocking remains on schedule for 10:32 a.m. As of today, the space station has been continuously manned, by five different three-person crews, for 590 days. Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz were launched to the outpost Dec. 5. Assuming an on-time landing Monday, they will have spent 194 days off the planet, a new endurance record for U.S. astronauts. Their replacements - Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, Sergei Treschev and NASA biochemist Peggy Whitson - were ferried into orbit aboard Endeavour. They plan to remain in space until mid October when they will be replaced by yet another crew. "I want to say to my space brothers, Dan Bursch and Carl Walz, thank you very much, you guys," Onufrienko said after mounting a mission patch on the wall of the Unity module. "I hope the new expedition will work here very successfully. Have a good time, guys." 10:35 a.m., 06/15/02, Update: Shuttle undocks from space station The shuttle Endeavour undocked from the international space station today at 10:32 a.m. as the two spacecraft sailed 240 miles above central Asia just west of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan. "Alpha, Endeavour, we have physical separation. We're executing the sep burn," called shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell as the orbiter pulled away. Following naval tradition, station engineer Peggy Whitson, nine days into a planned 132-day voyage, then rang the ship's bell aboard the lab complex, saying "Expedition 4 departing. Endeavour departing." "Thank you, Peggy," outgoing flight engineer Daniel Bursch, a Navy captain, replied from Endeavour. "Smooth sailing to you and your crew." With pilot Paul Lockhart at the controls, Endeavour slowly pulled straight away from the station, heading for a point about 450 feet directly in front of the lab complex. From there, Lockhart planned to guide the shuttle through a lap-and-a-quarter flyaround of the outpost before leaving the area for good around 12:16 p.m. 12:30 p.m., 06/15/02, Update: Shuttle completes fly-around; leaves station behind Shuttle pilot Paul Lockhart fired Endeavour's maneuvering jets a few minutes past noon to complete a photo-documentation fly around of the international space station, leaving the lab complex behind and setting the stage for a return to Earth Monday afternoon. "Alpha, we wish you a very wonderful flight," shuttle skipper Kenneth Cockrell radioed. "We've completed our separation burn, we're heading home. Enjoy yourselves while you're here." "OK, thanks for the ride," replied station flight engineer Peggy Whitson. Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun thanked Cockrell as well, jokingly telling him to "hit the road" when they land in Florida Monday. "We'll hit the road and we'll try to hit it very gently," Cockrell promised. According to revision J of the NASA television schedule, posted below, Endeavour is now scheduled to land back at the Kennedy Space Center at 12:59 p.m. Monday to close out a 4.8-million-mile voyage spanning 185 complete orbits since blastoff June 5. 06:00 p.m., 06/15/02, Update: Crew takes time off; managers pleased with mission success The Endeavour astronauts took the afternoon off today while mission managers at the Johnson Space Center took a preliminary look at the forecast for landing Monday. The weather looks generally favorable for Endeavour's planned 12:59 p.m. touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center, but showers may develop as the afternoon wears on. "This flight could not have gone any better than it has," said lead flight director Paul Hill. "Tomorrow, the orbiter crew will be finishing up cabin stow and checking out systems for entry on Monday. "We have been talking a little bit about weather. Right now, the weather looks good at KSC and the forecast our the first opportunity on Monday looks good. There's some concern that maybe some rain will come into the area after that. But we'll be watching it and the entry team will be on tomorrow and they'll be looking at weather." Hill took a moment to reflect on Endeavour's mission and the successful repair of the international space station's robot arm. A third spacewalk to replace the arm's broken wrist joint was added to the mission flight plan in March. In the shuttle world, that amounts to a last-minute change, but spacewalkers Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin successfully changed out the joint Thursday during a seven-hour 17-minute spacewalk. "About a hundred days before EVA-3 when we repaired the station arm was when we had the first indication we had a problem with the wrist-roll joint on the arm," Hill said. "And at that time, there were already a lot of folks here at JSC who know a lot about how we fly people in space, who thought we were biting off more than we could chew with his flight plan - with the logistics module, with the crew rotation and two EVAs. There were a lot of people really worried we had bitten off more than we could chew. "Then here we came back a hundred days before we performed this EVA and stepped up to a third EVA, which had not yet been developed or planned. Looking back now the flight could not have gone better. ... It looked very easy, but it took a lot of smart people, a lot of hard work and they did a super job." =================================================================== Astronauts ready shuttle for landing (06/16/02) 07:00 a.m., 06/16/02, Update: Crew works through entry checklist; cabin stow The Endeavour astronauts are spending the morning working through a standard pre-entry checklist, testing the shuttle's flight systems and stowing equipment to clear the way for landing Monday back at the Kennedy Space Center. Touchdown is targeted for 12:59:06 p.m. Monday. Commander Kenneth Cockrell, pilot Paul Lockhart and flight engineer Franklin Chang-Diaz will test Endeavour's re-entry systems beginning around 7:30 a.m., powering up one of the ship's hydraulic systems, checking the operation of cockpit instrumentation and test firing the ship's small steering jets. While that work is going on, their crewmates - Frenchman Philippe Perrin and the international space station's returning Expedition 4 crew - commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz - will stow loose gear and mount reclining seats on the shuttle's lower deck. The recliners will be used by Onufrienko and his crewmates during entry Monday to reduce the stress of the onset of gravity after a U.S.-record 194 days in space. After routine pre-entry communications checks with the ground, the astronauts will take the afternoon off. But the returning Expedition 4 crew will participate in round-robin media interviews starting at 1:38 p.m. Endeavour's KU-band television antenna will be stowed at 5:43 p.m. today. Endeavour is scheduled to land Monday on the shuttle's 3-mile-long runway at the Kennedy Space Center at 12:59:06 p.m. A second landing opportunity is available at 2:36:10 p.m. NASA managers have decided not to call up the shuttle's alternate landing site at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. If Endeavour does not land Monday, however, Edwards likely would be activated for Tuesday and any subsequent attempts. The shuttle has enough on-board supplies to remain in orbit until Thursday if absolutely necessary. Forecasters are predicting generally acceptable weather for Endeavour's first landing opportunity Monday, but conditions may deteriorate by the time the second opportunity rolls around. The weather is expected to be marginal to out of limits on Tuesday. As of this writing, the Spaceflight Meteorology Group at the Johnson Space Center in Houston believes the first opportunity Monday may be the best chance Endeavour's crew has of getting back to Florida for the next several days. A news briefing with entry flight director John Shannon, including an updated landing day forecast, is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on NASA television. In the meantime, here is an updated timeline of today's activities as uplinked to the crew from mission control (in Eastern and mission elapsed time): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 06/16/02 --- Flight Day 12 02:38 AM...10...09...15...ISS crew wakeup 04:23 AM...10...11...00...STS crew wakeup 06:38 AM...10...13...15...Lockhart exercises 06:53 AM...10...13...30...Cabin stow begins 07:18 AM...10...13...55...Onufrienko exercises 07:38 AM...10...14...15...Flight control system checkout 07:48 AM...10...14...25...Bursch exercises 08:18 AM...10...14...55...Walz exercises 08:48 AM...10...15...25...Reaction control system hot fire test 09:03 AM...10...15...40...PILOT landing practice 09:03 AM...10...15...40...Perrin exercises 10:03 AM...10...16...40...Launch-entry suit checkout 10:03 AM...10...16...40...Cockrell exercises 10:38 AM...10...17...15...Chang-Diaz exercises 11:03 AM...10...17...40...Recumbent seat setup 11:38 AM...10...18...15...Deorbit review 12:08 PM...10...18...45...Crew meal 12:08 PM...10...18...45...L-1 communications checks 01:03 PM...10...19...40...Crew off duty time begins 01:08 PM...10...19...45...Ergometer stow 01:08 PM...10...19...45...Post EVA entry prep 01:23 PM...10...20...00...Cabin stow resumes 01:38 PM...10...20...15...Media interviews: MS3, MS4, MS5 03:28 PM...10...22...05...Crew off duty time begins 03:30 PM...10...22...07...Entry news conference on NASA TV 05:23 PM...11...00...00...Laptop computer stow part 1 05:43 PM...11...00...20...KU antenna stow 08:23 PM...11...03...00...Crew sleep begins 04:40 p.m., 06/16/02, Update: Predicted rain raises prospect of shuttle landing delay Forecasters are predicting rain showers for the shuttle Endeavour's first Florida landing opportunity Monday and possible thunderstorms for the second, one orbit later. If the forecast holds up - and the outlook is nearly as bad Tuesday - the returning Expedition 4 space station crew will extend their U.S. endurance record from 194 days to at least 195 and possibly 196. That's because NASA managers want to get the shuttle back on the ground in Florida if at all possible to have any chance at all of holding an October launch date for Endeavour's next space station assembly mission. Endeavour has enough on-board supplies to remain in orbit until Thursday. With good weather expected all week at the shuttle's alternate landing site in California, NASA managers could wait until Wednesday, if it comes to that, before bringing the shuttle home on one coast or the other. "The program really wants to get into Florida," entry flight director John Shannon said in a telephone interview. But it is the weather that will tell the tale. Endeavour has two chances to land in Florida Monday, at 12:59:06 p.m. and one orbit later, at 2:36:10 p.m. The forecast is decidely bleak, with rain showers expected within 20 nautical miles for the first opportunity - a violation of NASA flight rules - and possible thunderstorms in the area by the time the second opportunity rolls around. NASA is not staffing Edwards Monday and Shannon said the agency might not staff the Mojave Desert landing site Tuesday, depending on the Florida forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday. If Endeavour hasn't gotten down by Tuesday, however, Shannon said he would recommend bringing Endeavour down one way or the other on Wednesday. For most shuttle crews, the prospect of an extra day in space is not necessarily a bad thing. But for the space station's returning Expedition 4 crew - commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz - every additional day in space is one more day away from family and friends. They were launched to the space station Dec. 5. On June 11, Walz and Bursch set a new U.S. space endurance record, beating the old mark of 188 days set by astronaut Shannon Lucid in 1996 aboard the Russian Mir space station. A landing Monday would cap a record 194-day stay in space. "Well, we have more film to shoot so you know, we'll just keep shooting film up here," Walz joked today when asked about the prospect of a landing delay. "Of course, we're hoping to be able to get back home tomorrow. But if we have to wait a day, we'll wait a day and we'll land in Florida on Tuesday." Maybe. Endeavour is scheduled for its next launch Oct. 6. The goal of mission STS-113 is to carry up the third section of the station's huge solar array truss. The shuttle must get off the ground by Oct. 11 to ensure a landing by Oct. 20. That's important because the next Russian Soyuz taxi flight is scheduled for launch Oct. 22 and there is a flight rule requiring a two-day separation between shuttle landings and Soyuz launches. The Soyuz, in turn, must launch by Oct. 22 to ensure a full-duration mission and a landing by Nov. 1. Starting Nov. 2, landing opportunities would occur after dark, an option the Russians will not entertain. Because of Endeavour's weeklong launch delay, some NASA managers believe they have already lost any chance of launching the shuttle in October. Others hold out hope the shuttle's prime contractor, United Space Alliance, can refine the processing schedule to bring in at least a few opportunities between Oct. 6 and 11. But to have any chance at all of making October, Endeavour must get back to Florida this week. A diversion to California would all but guarantee a slip into November. "We've got to land at the Cape to have any shot at all," said one NASA manager. Weather aside, Endeavour came through a round of pre-entry systems checks today in good condition and Shannon said the orbiter is ready for landing. "Today was a very good day," he said. "I'm happy to say Endeavour is in really good shape. We had a flawless checkout of all the entry systems and we had good comm checks with our landing site in Florida and our landing site in California." While Edwards will not be staffed Monday, Shannon said NASA managers have not ruled out the possibility of bringing it up Tuesday. "What I think will happen, if we can't land tomorrow we'll look at what Kennedy looks like on Tuesday, what it looks like on Wednesday and decide if Edwards should be brought up on Tuesday. ... The long-range forecast for Florida, Tuesday is not a great deal better ... so it'll be rain again. Wednesday looks much better, but it's pretty far away and I'm not sure the models have a good handle on it yet. "If I had a pretty good feeling the Kennedy Space Center was going to be available to us Wednesday, and I continued to have the good feeling that Edwards would be good on Wednesday and Thursday, I would try for Kennedy Space Center tomorrow, Tuesday and make Wednesday what we call our 'pick 'em day' where we bring up two sites and pick the best of the two sites. I don't want to go down to the last day. I can if I have to, but I'd like to have that in my back pocket when we land." =================================================================== Landing delayed 24 hours by bad weather (06/17/02) 07:30 a.m., 06/17/02, Update: Astronauts gear up for re-entry Hoping for a break in dismal weather, the Endeavour astronauts are readying the shuttle for re-entry and landing today at the Kennedy Space Center to close out a 12-day mission and to bring the space station's Expedition 4 crew home after a U.S. record 194 days in space. Astronaut Kenneth Cockrell, pilot Paul Lockhart, Philippe Perrin, Franklin Chang-Diaz and the returning station crew - Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz - plan to begin working through their deorbit checklist just before 8 a.m. The shuttle's payload bay doors will be closed around 9:11 a.m. Touchdown on runway 33 at the Florida spaceport is targeted for 12:59 p.m., but the weather currently is forecast to be "no go," with low clouds, rain and thundershowers expected within 30 nautical miles of the shuttle's 3-mile-long runway. Commander Kenneth Cockrell and his six crewmates have a second landing opportunity one 91-minute orbit later, at 2:36 p.m., but no significant improvement in the weather is expected. NASA is not staffing Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., today. If Endeavour cannot make it back to Florida, the crew will remain in orbit another day and try again Tuesday. But the outlook for Tuesday is almost as bleak as it is for today. The most recent Spaceflight Meteorology Group forecast for today calls for broken decks of clouds at 3,000 feet and 8,000 feet - both violations of NASA's flight rules - and an overcast deck at 20,000 feet. Winds are expected to be out of 230 degrees at 11 knots with gusts to 17, almost a pure crosswind 2 knots above NASA's flight rule safety limit. Showers and thunderstorms are expected within 30 nautical miles, another violation of NASA's landing flight rules. Satellite imagery and radar views are available at the SMG web site. The forecast for Tuesday calls for showers and thunderstorms within 30 nautical miles, scattered clouds at 3,000 feet, a broken deck at 8,000 feet and overcast at 20,000 feet. Winds will be out of 190 degrees at 8 knots with gusts to 14 knots. An updated SMG forecast is expected later this morning, based on the latest observations and conditions. Entry flight director John Shannon said Sunday that conditions appeared acceptable at Edwards all week. He said if Endeavour's crew fails to make it home today, he would look at the Florida forecast for Tuesday and make a decision about calling up Edwards. But the latest forecast for Tuesday at Edwards now includes winds at 20 knots with gusts to 30, producing a crosswind violation for the shuttle during the second of two landing opportunities. The winds are barely within limits for the first opportunity. In any case, a diversion to Edwards would add a week to Endeavour's turn-around time for its next mission, eliminating any chance of launching the flight in October as now planned. That flight currently is scheduled for Oct. 6, but if the shuttle is not off the ground by Oct. 11, the flight will be delayed into November because of conflicts with a Russian Soyuz mission. To have any chance of getting off in October, Endeavour must land in Florida this week (see the previous status report below for complete details). Endeavour has enough on-board supplies to remain in orbit until Thursday in a worst-case scenario. While the current forecast is not favorable, Florida's weather is expected to improve toward the end of the week. Here is today's entry timeline (in Eastern): Landing Opportunity No. 1: Rev. 185 Deorbit to KSC Deorbit burn duration.....2 minutes 54 seconds Change in velocity........301 feet per second (205 mph) Crossrange................38 statute miles (right) Time to atmosphere (EI)...35 minutes 2 seconds Range to KSC at EI........5,103 statute miles Time to landing at EI.....34 minutes Runway....................33 Runway turn angle.........288 degrees (right overhead turn) TIME..........EVENT 07:53 AM......Begin deorbit timeline 08:06 AM......Radiator stow 08:16 AM......Mission specialists seat installation 08:22 AM......Computers set for deorbit prep 08:26 AM......Hydraulic system configuration 08:51 AM......Flash evaporator cooling system checkout 08:57 AM......Final payload deactivation 09:11 AM......Payload bay doors closed 09:21 AM......Mission control 'go' for OPS-3 entry software load 09:31 AM......OPS-3 transition 09:56 AM......Entry switchlist verification 10:06 AM......Deorbit maneuver update 10:11 AM......Crew entry review 10:26 AM......Commander/pilot don entry suits 10:43 AM......IMU navigation system alignment 10:51 AM......Commander/pilot strap in; crewmates don suits 11:08 AM......Shuttle steering check 11:11 AM......APU hydraulic system prestart 11:18 AM......Toilet deactivation 11:26 AM......Payload bay vent doors closed for entry 11:31 AM......Mission control 'go' for deorbit burn 11:37 AM......Mission specialists seat ingress 11:46 AM......Single APU start 11:51:16 AM...Deorbit ignition 11:52:09 AM...TDRS-West acquisition of signal 11:54:10 AM...Deorbit burn complete 12:27:11 PM...Entry interface (shuttle hits discernible atmosphere) 12:32:04 PM...14-degree left roll command 12:39:30 PM...65-degree roll reversal 12:52:35 PM...Velocity less than mach 2.5 12:54:48 PM...Velocity less than mach 1 12:55:16 PM...Shuttle banks to line up on runway 33 12:59:06 PM...Landing Landing Opportunity No. 2: Rev. 186 Deorbit to KSC Deorbit burn duration.....2 minutes 54 seconds Change in velocity........302 feet per second (206 mph) Crossrange................954 statute miles (right) Time to atmosphere (EI)...30 minutes 12 seconds Range to KSC at EI........4,894 statute miles Time to landing at EI.....36 minutes Runway....................33 Runway turn angle.........213 degrees (right overhead turn) 01:10 PM......Mission control 'go' for deorbit burn 01:16 PM......Mission specialists seat ingress 01:25 PM......Single APU start 1:30:16 PM....Deorbit ignition 1:33:10 PM....Deorbit ignition complete 1:33:59 PM....AOS TDRS 2:04:11 PM....Entry interface 2:09:00 PM....14-degree left roll command 2:26:11 PM....43-degree roll reversal 2:29:45 PM....Velocity less than mach 2.5 2:31:59 PM....Velocity less than mach 1 2:32:59 PM....Shuttle on the HAC 2:36:10 PM....Landing 10:40 a.m., 06/17/02, Update: Weather still uncertain for landing The weather at the Kennedy Space Center for today's planned shuttle landing does not seem as grim as initially forecast, but conditions are unstable and it still appears to be a long shot for getting Endeavour's crew home today. An expected broken deck of clouds at 8,000 feet has not materialized and a cloud deck at 3,000 feet has not yet gone broken. It's cloudy, but it's not wall-to-wall - yet - and there is no rain in the immediate vicinity. But as the ground heats up, convection will increase and forecasters still expect thunderstorms to develop to the west. In addition, a line of storms approaching the space center from the northwest could well be on top of the Cape by landing time. Satellite imagery shows a steady buildup and fairly constant motion. Yet another issue: Possible hail from storms late in the afternoon that could damage the shuttle before it could be moved into a hangar after landing. All in all, a tough call for entry flight director John Shannon at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Endeavour astronauts, meanwhile, are pressing ahead with their entry timeline, readying the shuttle for a two-minute 55-second deorbit rocket firing at 11:51:20 a.m. and a landing around 12:59:10 a.m. A second landing opportunity is available at 2:36 p.m., but conditions are expected to deteriorate as the day wears on. 11:15 a.m., 06/17/02, Update: Shuttle re-entry delayed one orbit Entry flight director John Shannon has waved off the shuttle Endeavour's first attempt to land in Florida today because of developing storms to the west, high crosswinds and generally hard-to-predict conditions. Touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center, originally scheduled for 12:59 p.m., is now targeted for 2:36:10 p.m. To make the second and final landing opportunity of the day, shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell must fire Endeavour's twin orbital maneuvering system rockets at 1:30:16 p.m. If approaching storms block the second opportunity as well, landing will be delayed 24 hours. "Taco, we're going to wave off this first rev and still stay in a config to try it the second time around," astronaut William Oefelein radioed from Houston. "We're still looking at the weather, particularly the stuff to the northwest and west that's starting to build, as well as the winds are kind of touching on the crosswind limit and that low broken deck is going scattered and back to broken. So we're still looking at that, but we're going to officially wave off this first attempt." Satellite imagery shows a solid line of storms approaching from the northwest and as the ground continues to heat up, more convective activity can be expected. There appears to be little chance of getting Endeavour home today, but as they say in Florida, "if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change." Shannon is hoping for just such a change. 11:50 a.m., 06/17/02, Update: Landing delayed 24 hours Bowing to the inevitable, entry flight director John Shannon has called off any attempt to bring the shuttle Endeavour back to Earth today, telling the astronauts to doff their bulky pressure suits and to set their sights on a Tuesday landing instead. The delay means the space station's returning Expedition 4 crew will extend their U.S. space endurance record from 194 days to at least 195. And given the forecast for Tuesday, Expedition 4 flight engineers Carl Walz and Daniel Bursch might extend their record even further when all is said and done. "Taco, looks like we're going to stay away from the chicken consume today and we're going to go ahead and wave off the second rev attempt here," astronaut William Oefelein radioed from Houston. "What we'd like you to do is go ahead and proceed to the deorbit prep backout on page two-dash five." "Billy-O, first of all tell everybody waiting on the ground we're sorry and we'll try to see them tomorrow," commander Kenneth "Taco" Cockrell replied from orbit. "And we're ready on two-dash five." "Copy, Taco. Yeah, we gave it a good college try today, but those thunderstorms are starting to encroach into that 30-mile circle." Endeavour's crew will have two landing opportunities in Florida on Tuesday, weather permitting: TIME.........EVENT 10:51 a.m....Deorbit ignition (orbit 200) 11:56 a.m....Landing 12:28 p.m....Deorbit ignition (orbit 201) 01:32 p.m....Landing Endeavour was launched June 5. The primary goal of the flight was to deliver a fresh crew to the lab complex - Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, Peggy Whitson and Sergei Treschev - and to bring Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Bursch and Walz back to Earth. The shuttle astronauts also upgraded and repaired the station's robot arm and delivered nearly three tons of supplies and equipment. On June 11, Walz and Bursch set a new U.S. space endurance record, beating the old mark of 188 days set by astronaut Shannon Lucid in 1996 aboard the Russian Mir space station. As of today, they have been aloft for 194 days. Endeavour had two opportunities on successive orbits to land in Florida today, at 12:59 p.m. and again at 2:36 p.m. Shannon waved off the first opportunity shortly after 11 a.m. because of developing storm activity to the west, high winds and a line of storm approaching from the northwest that could result in hail later today. After discussing the issue with forecasters in Houston and at KSC, he reluctantly called off the second attempt shortly after 11:30 a.m. The shuttle's backup landing site - Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., was not called up for today's landing attempts. Based on an updated forecast, however, Shannon may elect to staff Edwards on Tuesday. The Florida outlook currently calls for more showers and thunderstorms within 30 nautical miles of the Kennedy Space Center. The forecast for Edwards calls for generally clear skies, although high crosswinds could be an issue. "It's probably going to be more of the same," Oefelein radioed Cockrell when asked about the forecast for Florida. "We can give you a better picture in a little while. We're going to get together in a little while and talk about whether we're going to bring up Edwards tomorrow." Endeavour has enough on-board supplies to remain in orbit until Thursday if absolutely necessary. 12:20 p.m., 06/17/02, Update: Landing times for Tuesday and Wednesday (updated at 1:45 p.m.) NASA's mission management team has decided to staff Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., for landing attempts Tuesday and Wednesday. The forecast for Tuesday at both sites is "no go," with rain and cloud cover in Florida and high crosswinds in California. But these are preliminary forecasts and NASA managers are hopeful conditions will improve between now and then. Endeavour has enough on-board supplies to remain in space until Thursday in a worst-case scenario. Here are preliminary landing times for both sites Tuesday and Wednesday (in Eastern time): ORBIT...SITE...DEORBIT BURN...LANDING......dT......dV......RUNWAY 06/18/02 200.....KSC....10:47 a.m......11:55 a.m....2:56....305.....33 201.....KSC....12:24 p.m......01:31 p.m. 202.....EDW....01:54 p.m......03:00 p.m. 203.....EDW....03:32 p.m......04:36 p.m. 06/19/02 215.....KSC.....09:47 a.m.....10:52 a.m. 216.....KSC.....11:23 a.m.....12:28 a.m. 217.....EDW.....12:54 a.m.....01:58 p.m. 218.....EDW.....02:31 p.m.....03:34 p.m. 219.....EDW.....04:08 p.m.....05:10 p.m. 05:20 p.m., 06/17/02, Update: Updating landing timeline The Endeavour crew's updated deorbit timeline for Tuesday at the Kennedy Space Center is posted below based on the latest data from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Details for potential landing opportunities at Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert will be posted when available. =================================================================== Second straight landing delay (06/18/02) 07:15 a.m., 06/18/02, Update: Astronauts ready shuttle for second landing attempt The Endeavour astronauts are readying the shuttle for a second landing attempt today, but another dismal forecast for the Kennedy Space Center - coupled with improving weather Wednesday at both Kennedy and Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. - raises the prospect of a second straight waveoff. Keeping a wary eye on the weather, Endeavour's astronauts are preparing for a re-entry rocket firing at 10:47:12 a.m. to set up a touchdown on runway 33 at the Florida spaceport at 11:55:27 a.m. A backup landing opportunity is available one orbit later at 1:31:13 p.m. A detailed entry timeline covering both opportunities is available below. The Spaceflight Meteorology Group at the Johnson Space Center in Houston is predicting scattered clouds at 3,000 feet, a broken deck at 9,000 feet and overcast at 15,000 feet, with winds out of 160 degrees at 10 knots with peaks at 16 knots (realtime radar view). Crosswinds are no problem, but showers and thundershowers are predicted within 30 nautical miles of the runway and that's a chance that a broken deck of clouds will develop at 3,000 feet. Both conditions represent NASA flight rule violations. Out at Edwards Air Force Base, clear skies are predicted for this afternoon, but high winds are expected to develop at the day wears on. The shuttle crew has two landing opportunities at Edwards, the first at 3:02 p.m. EDT and the second at 4:38 p.m. SMG forecasters say the winds will be acceptable for the first opportunity but out of limits for the second. Putting all that together, entry flight director John Shannon has decided to press ahead and make a run at the first Florida landing opportunity. If the weather doesn't improve - and that appears unlikely - he will re-assess the forecast for Edwards and make a decision on whether to divert to California today or to keep the shuttle up another day and make a third landing try Wednesday. Forecasters expect significant improvement in Florida's weather overnight with considerable drying. While there's still a chance of showers within 30 miles, the overall outlook for Wednesday is much better. And at Edwards, conditions are expected to be excellent. Given the Wednesday forecast - and the fact that Endeavour has enough on-board supplies to remain in orbit until Thursday - Shannon may elect to keep crew in orbit another 24 hours to have one last chance at getting Endeavour back to Florida. A California landing would add at least a week to the shuttle's turnaround time for its next mission and eliminate any chance of getting that flight off in October as currently planned. Here are updated landing times for today and Wednesday at Edwards and Kennedy (in EDT): ORBIT...SITE...DEORBIT BURN...LANDING 06/18/02 200.....KSC....10:47:12 a.m......11:55:27 a.m. 201.....KSC....12:24:11 p.m......01:31:13 p.m. 202.....EDW....01:54:26 p.m......03:01:46 p.m. 203.....EDW....03:31:41 p.m......04:37:38 p.m. 06/19/02 215.....KSC.....09:47 a.m........10:52 a.m. 216.....KSC.....11:23 a.m........12:28 a.m. 217.....EDW.....12:54 a.m........01:58 p.m. 218.....EDW.....02:31 p.m........03:34 p.m. 219.....EDW.....04:08 p.m........05:10 p.m. 08:15 a.m., 06/18/02, Update: Astronauts briefed on weather; adding Edwards data Endeavour commander Kenneth Cockrell asked flight controllers for an "anti-rain dance" to clear up cloudy weather and permit a landing today at the Kennedy Space Center. During a short conversation with the crew, astronaut William Oefelein told Cockrell that as of 8 a.m., conditions at the Florida spaceport were generally acceptable, but he said forecasters were expecting the weather to deteriorate later in the morning. After reading through the forecast for both Kennedy and Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Oefelein explained entry flight director John Shannon's strategy, saying "if the weather looks good at KSC tomorrow we will probably not try Edwards today and go to KSC tomorrow should we not get in there today." "OK, understand all of that," Cockrell replied. "Sounds like our best opportunity is the first one for KSC." "Taco, that's right. Just like yesterday, as the day progresses we expect the weather to degrade." "Well, do your anti-rain dance and keep the storms from developing or moving towards KSC and let's come home," Cockrell said. "OK. I'll put that in work." The entry timeline below has been updated to include data covering both of today's landing opportunities at Edwards Air Force Base. 09:15 a.m., 06/18/02, Update: NASA rules out Edwards landing for today Entry flight director John Shannon has decided not to make any attempt to land the shuttle Endeavour at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., today. If the astronauts can't make it back to the Kennedy Space Center today - and that appears doubtful at present - they will remain in orbit another 24 hours and try again Wednesday. The shuttle has enough on-board supplies to remain aloft until Thursday in a worst-case scenario. Endeavour has two Florida landing opportunities today, the first at 11:55 a.m. and the second at 1:31 p.m. As of 9:15 a.m., the local weather was generally acceptable, but convection is expected to pick up as the sun rises higher and forecasters still predict conditions will be "no go" when the first landing opportunity rolls around. A decision on whether to attempt that opportunity is expected around 10:30 a.m. for a possible de-orbit rocket firing at 10:47 a.m. The astronauts had at least one acceptable landing opportunity at Edwards today, but Shannon ruled that out when forecasters said the outlook in Florida on Wednesday is much better. NASA wants to get Endeavour back to Florida if at all possible to avoid a lengthy delay for its next mission in October. Landings in California cost about $1 million and add a week or more to a shuttle's turnaround time. The issue is complicated in this case because of a Russian mission in late October to deliver a fresh Soyuz lifeboat to the outpost. Endeavour must be off the ground on its next mission by Oct. 11 or the flight will be delayed into November. Launch currently is targeted for Oct. 6. As for today, forecasters expect conditions to deteriorate as the day wears on. If the weather doesn't support the first landing opportunity, re-entry operations likely will be called off for the day. 10:00 a.m., 06/18/02, Update: First Florida landing opportunity waved off Entry flight director John Shannon has ruled out the first of two landing opportunities for the shuttle Endeavour at the Kennedy Space Center today because of the buildup of showers and thunderstorms near the spaceport. Only one opportunity remains, requiring a deorbit rocket firing at 12:24 p.m. for a landing at 1:31 p.m. As of this writing, that option appears unlikely because of increasing convective activity triggering storms all across the "Sunshine State." "We're going to officially throw in the towel on this first opportunity," called astronaut William Oefelein from mission control. "What we would like in the short term is for you just to stay in your current config. We're going to continue to monitor the trends in the weather. We're particularly concerned with some thunderstorms to the west and southwest and their associated anvils encroaching upon our (safety zone). So we're going to continue to watch those and we'll let you know how that develops." "OK, we understand," replied shuttle skipper Kenneth Cockrell. 10:40 a.m., 06/18/02, Update: Landing delayed to Wednesday As expected, storm buildups near the Kennedy Space Center forced entry flight director John Shannon to call off today's attempt to bring the shuttle Endeavour back to Earth. Instead, the shuttle crew will remain in orbit for a second additional day, extending the U.S. endurance record set by the returning Expedition 4 space station crew from 195 days to 196. With a good forecast for Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert - and with improving conditions expected in Florida - Shannon plans to bring Endeavour's crew back to Earth Wednesday, on one coast or the other. While Florida is the clear preference, the astronauts will be diverted to Edwards if conditions don't permit a return to Kennedy. The shuttle has enough on-board supplies to remain in orbit until Thursday in a worst-case scenario. For shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell, back-to-back landing delays are becoming the rule, not the exception. During shuttle mission STS-80 in December 1996, Cockrell landed Columbia at Kennedy on the crew's third try after two straight days of weather waveoffs. And mission STS-98 ended at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., in February 2001 after two days of bad weather in Florida. "Well Taco, I can say this, at least you're consistent," astronaut William Oefelein called from mission control. "As with STS-80 and 98, we're going to wave off today's second-day landing attempts and try for tomorrow. I think the silver lining is that at least we'll have a tie breaker for Edwards or KSC as to where you land most. The reason we're waving off is for some low broken (cloud) decks and for some attached thunderstorm concerns. When you're ready, we'll meet you in the deorbit prep backout." "Well, we're disappointed," replied Cockrell. "I was hoping to not repeat the STS-80 and 98 episodes." For three of Endeavour's crewmates - returning space station commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz - today's delay marked an unwelcome extension to a marathon mission. They were launched to the station Dec. 5. On June 11, they set a new U.S. endurance record, beating the old mark of 188 days set by Shannon Lucid aboard the Mir space station in 1996. A landing Wednesday would close out a record 196-day voyage. With family and friends waiting in Florida, they're hoping for a return to the Kennedy Space Center. Here are all the landing times for Wednesday at both Kennedy and Edwards (all in Eastern; dV=change in velocity (in feet per second); dT=burn duration (in minutes and seconds); RW=runway): ORBIT...DEORBIT BURN...dV....dT.....LANDING........SITE..RW 215.....09:43:49 a.m...306...2:56...10:52:32 a.m...KSC...15 216.....11:19:17 a.m...304...2:55...12:27:00 p.m...KSC...15 217.....12:50:27 p.m...303...2:55...01:58:10 p.m...EDW...22 218.....02:26:45 p.m...303...2:55...03:33:21 p.m...EDW...22 219.....04:05:31 p.m...306...2:56...05:10:41 p.m...EDW...22 The most recent forecast by the Spaceflight Meteorology Group at the Johnson Space Center in Houston calls for generally favorable conditions in Florida Wednesday, although the official forecast still calls for a chance of showers within 30 nautical miles. Scattered clouds are expected at 3,000 feet, a broken deck at 25,000 feet and winds out of 140 degrees at 10 knots with gusts to 16 knots. Crosswinds are not a factor. At Edwards, SMG is forecasting clear skies with winds out of 230 degrees at 12 knots with peaks to 18 knots. But the winds will pick up as the afternoon wears on. Conditions at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, NASA's last-resort landing site, are expected to be ideal. An updated deorbit timeline covering Wednesday's landing opportunities in Florida and California is posted below. =================================================================== Endeavour diverted to California touchdown (06/19/02) 04:15 a.m., 06/19/02, Update: Endeavour crew ready for third round of landing tries The Endeavour astronauts are readying the shuttle for a third straight day of landing attempts and with forecasters predicting better weather in Florida and excellent conditions at NASA's backup landing site in California, it appears likely Endeavour's mission will finally end, on one coast or the other, before the day is done. After back-to-back waveoffs Monday and Tuesday because of bad weather in Florida, commander Kenneth Cockrell and his six crewmates have five landing opportunities today. The first two are at the Kennedy Space Center while the last three at Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert. To make the first landing opportunity in Florida, Cockrell and pilot Paul Lockhart must fire the shuttle's twin orbital maneuvering system braking rockets at 9:43:49 a.m. to set up a touchdown at 10:52:32 a.m. on runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center. Detailed timelines covering all five landing opportunities are available below. Entry flight director John Shannon is hoping to bring Endeavour down in Florida to minimize the turnaround time for the shuttle's next flight and to preserve any chance of launching it in October as currently planned. But after two straight days of weather waveoffs, Shannon plans to divert the crew to California if the weather in Florida doesn't cooperate. While the shuttle has enough on-board supplies to remain in orbit until Thursday, Shannon said Sunday he would not exercise that option unless absolutely necessary. Here are all the landing times for today at both Kennedy and Edwards (all in Eastern; dV=change in velocity (in feet per second); dT=burn duration (in minutes and seconds)): ORBIT...DEORBIT BURN...dV....dT.....LANDING........SITE..RUNWAY 215.....09:43:49 a.m...306...2:56...10:52:32 a.m...KSC...15 216.....11:19:17 a.m...304...2:55...12:27:00 p.m...KSC...15 217.....12:50:27 p.m...303...2:55...01:58:10 p.m...EDW...22 218.....02:26:45 p.m...303...2:55...03:33:21 p.m...EDW...22 219.....04:05:31 p.m...306...2:56...05:10:41 p.m...EDW...22 Wherever Endeavour lands, two of the three returning Expedition 4 space station astronauts will set a new U.S. space endurance record and one will set an individual mark. Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz were launched to the lab complex Dec. 5. On June 11, Walz and Bursch beat the old U.S. endurance record of 188 days set by astronaut Shannon Lucid in 1996 aboard the Russian Mir space station. Assuming a touchdown at 10:52:32 a.m. today, the U.S. record will stand at 195 days 16 hours 33 minutes and four seconds. Walz will set a U.S. individual record as well, logging a cumulative 230 days in space over five flights. Bursch will post a similar mark - 226.6 cumulative days aloft - while Mir-veteran Onufrienko will push his personal total to 388.5 days. Early this morning, Bursch commented on the fires raging in Colorado, saying he'd never seen heavier concentrations of smoke. "I woke up about two and a half hours after we went to bed last night and happened to look out the window and saw, it looks like there are some really bad fires west of Denver in Colorado," Bursch radioed shortly after crew wakeup. "Are they still having some bad fires in Evergreen, Colorado, do you know?" "Yeah, they still are," replied astronaut Patrick Forrester from mission control. "They have not had much luck getting those under control." "The amount of smoke was incredible," Bursch said, "it's probably the most smoke I've ever seen from any fires and it almost extended all the way - we were on a southeast pass - and it seemed like it almost extended all the way to Texas." 06:00 a.m., 06/19/02, Update: Florida weather appears bleak The Spaceflight Meteorology Group at the Johnson Space Center in Houston is now predicting rain showers within 30 nautical miles of the Kennedy Space Center today for the shuttle Endeavour's first landing opportunity at 10:53 a.m. The SMG forecast calls for thunderstorms to develop before the crew's second Florida landing opportunity, along with a possible broken deck of clouds at 3,000 feet. National Weather Service radar in Melbourne, Fla., shows storms developing across the state to the southwest that are moving toward the Kennedy Space Center. If the forecast holds up, entry flight director John Shannon will have no choice but to divert Endeavour's crew to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., where the weather is expected to be ideal. The first opportunity to land at Edwards requires a deorbit rocket firing at 12:50 p.m. EDT for a landing at 1:58 p.m. Detailed timelines covering all of the shuttle's landing opportunities today are posted below. 08:20 a.m., 06/19/02, Update: First landing opportunity ruled out Entry flight director John Shannon has ordered the Endeavour astronauts to pass up their first opportunity to land in Florida today because of thunderstorms over west Florida that could move into the Kennedy Space Center area. If the storms dissipate, the astronauts could take advantage of a second and final Florida landing opportunity at 12:27 p.m. But if the storms persist, Shannon will be forced to divert the crew to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., for a touchdown at 1:58 p.m. EDT. Here are the remaining landing times for today at both Kennedy and Edwards (all in Eastern; dV=change in velocity (in feet per second); dT=burn duration (in minutes and seconds)): ORBIT...DEORBIT BURN...dV....dT.....LANDING........SITE..RUNWAY 216.....11:19:17 a.m...304...2:55...12:27:00 p.m...KSC...15 217.....12:50:27 p.m...303...2:55...01:58:10 p.m...EDW...22 218.....02:26:45 p.m...303...2:55...03:33:21 p.m...EDW...22 219.....04:05:31 p.m...306...2:56...05:10:41 p.m...EDW...22 10:20 a.m., 06/19/02, Update: Astronauts suit up for final shot at Florida landing The Endeavour astronauts have been told to go ahead and don their pressure suits for a possible return to Florida at 12:27 p.m., weather permitting. Conditions near the shuttle's 3-mile-long runway remain dynamic, but thunderstorms have not yet developed and there appears to be some slight chance the weather could cooperate. Hoping for the best, flight director John Shannon has decided to make a run at it, having CAPCOM William Oefelein tell the crew a final decision one way or the other likely will not be made until shortly before the de-orbit rocket firing at 11:19 a.m. If the weather forces Shannon to rule out a Florida landing today, the astronauts will simply go around the world one more time and land instead at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., at 1:58 p.m. EDT. The de-orbit rocket firing to set up a Mojave Desert landing would be targeted for 12:50 p.m. 11:15 a.m., 06/19/02, Update: Endeavour diverted to California As expected, cloud buildups over the Kennedy Space Center forced entry flight director John Shannon to divert the Endeavour astronauts to California. Commander Kenneth Cockrell and pilot Paul Lockhart now plan to fire the shuttle's twin braking rockets at 12:50 p.m. to set up a landing on runway 22 at Edwards at 1:58 p.m. EDT. The weather at Edwards is ideal, with clear skies and crosswinds within limits. "It looks like a gorgeous day out there, Taco, clear skies; vis is unrestricted," astronaut William Oefelein radioed the crew from Houston. "The forecast winds will be 250 (degrees) at 12 (knots), peak 18." Here is the timeline for a deorbit rocket firing on orbit 217 (all times in Eastern): Landing Opportunity No. 3: Rev. 217 Deorbit to Edwards Deorbit burn duration.....2 minutes 55 seconds Change in velocity........303 feet per second (207 mph) Crossrange................692 statute miles (left) Time to atmosphere (EI)...24 minutes 9 seconds Range to KSC at EI........5,028 statute miles Runway....................22 Runway turn angle.........225 degrees 12:30 PM......Mission control 'go' for deorbit burn 12:36 PM......Mission specialists seat ingress 12:45 PM......Single hydraulic system APU start 12:50:27 PM...Deorbit ignition 12:53:22 PM...Deorbit burn complete 01:02:25 PM...TDRS-West acquisition of signal 01:26:34 PM...The shuttle hits the discernible atmosphere (76 miles up) 01:31:27 PM...17-degree left roll command 01:45:07 PM...56-degree roll reversal 01:51:50 PM...Velocity less than mach 2.5 01:54:07 PM...Velocity less than mach 1 01:54:55 PM...Shuttle banks to line up on runway 22 01:58:10 PM...Landing This will be the first California landing in the past six flights. Here are the details at a glance: Landings......KSC.......EAFB......WSSH.......Total ...............14..........5.........0..........19 Daylight.......45.........43.........1..........89 Total..........59.........48.........1.........108 Most Recent....04/19/02...05/01/01...03/30/82 Cockrell, Lockhart and flight engineer Franklin Chang-Diaz will make the trip back to Earth seated on the shuttle's upper deck. French astronaut Philippe Perrin will be seated on the lower deck to provide assistance, if needed, to returning space station astronauts Yuri Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz. The Expedition 4 crew is wrapping up a U.S. record 196-day voyage that began Dec. 5. 12:55 p.m., 06/19/02, Update: Shuttle braking rockets fired Flying upside down and backward over the Indian Ocean, commander Kenneth Cockrell fired the shuttle Endeavour's twin braking rockets at 12:50 p.m. to begin an hourlong descent to runway 22 at Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert. Touchdown is expected a few seconds past 1:58 p.m. to close out a 14-day mission spanning 217 complete orbits and 5.7 million miles since blastoff June 5. This status report will be updated after Endeavour lands or as conditions warrant. 02:10 p.m., 06/19/02, Update: Shuttle Endeavour glides to California touchdown Diverted to California after back-to-back landing delays Monday and Tuesday, the shuttle Endeavour's crew glided to a picture-perfect Mojave Desert touchdown today, bringing a trio of weary space station fliers home after a U.S. record 196 days in space. With commander Kenneth Cockrell and pilot Paul Lockhart at the controls, Endeavour dropped out of a crystal blue sky and settled to a high-speed touchdown on runway 22 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., at 1:57:41 p.m. EDT. Mission duration was 13 days 20 hours 34 minutes and 52 seconds. "Houston, Endeavour, wheels stopped," Cockrell radioed as the shuttle coasted to a halt. "Copy, wheels stopped, Endeavour. Welcome back to Earth," replied astronaut William Oefelein from mission control. "Congratulations on a very successful and very safe assembly, repair and crew rotation mission to the international space station. And a special welcome home to the Expedition 4 crew after your record stay aboard the ISS." "OK, Billy-O, thanks for the support, thanks for hanging with us for the last two days getting us down," Cockrell replied. Said Bursch from the shuttle's lower deck: "It's great to be back on planet Earth!" Flight surgeons were standing by to assist the returning space station crew - Expedition 4 commander Yuri Onufrienko, Bursch and Carl Walz - and to monitor their initial readaptation to the unfamiliar tug of gravity. "They're going to have to learn how to do things again in one G (gravity) and use muscles they haven't really been using," said chief medical officer Terry Taddeo. "They're going to be feeling sick for a little while and they're going to be feeling a little wobbly as they walk around. "They may find turning corners causes them to have a little bit of dizziness, they know something's funny, they know they're not right back where they were when they launched. ... There are a lot of physiologic changes they're going to experience with their balance and their muscle soreness." He said the medical team looked forward to "getting them back on the ground, re-uniting them with their families and then getting them started on their post-flight rehab and exercise program." But reunions with family members will have to wait until Thursday, after the astronauts fly back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Wives, children and family friends were gathered at the Kennedy Space Center, where they sat through three-straight days of landing delays. Endeavour's diversion to California also was a major disappointment to NASA. Landings at Edwards cost the agency about $1 million and add at least a week to an orbiter's turnaround time for its next mission. Endeavour is scheduled for launch on its next space station assembly flight Oct. 6, a date that already was doubtful because of the shuttle's six-day launch delay. If Endeavour isn't off the ground by Oct. 11, the flight will be delayed to November because of a firmly scheduled Russian flight to deliver a fresh Soyuz lifeboat. But in the end, entry flight director John Shannon had little choice. After waving off the crew's first Florida landing opportunity in hopes conditions would improve, he finally ordered the diversion to Edwards when it became obvious the weather was not going to cooperate. Onufrienko, Walz and Bursch were launched to the international space station Dec. 5. They were officially replaced aboard the station June 7 by Expedition 5 commander Valeri Korzun, Sergei Treschev and Peggy Whitson, who plan to remain in orbit until Endeavour returns this fall with a fresh crew. Bursch and Walz, meanwhile, set a new U.S. space endurance record June 11 when they beat the old mark of 188 days set by astronaut Shannon Lucid aboard the Russian Mir space station in 1996. With today's landing, the new U.S. record is 195 days 16 hours 33 minutes. Walz also now holds the U.S. individual record for cumulative time aloft with 231 days in space over five missions. Bursch is close behind with 227 days while Lucid's five missions add up to 223 days. Mir-veteran Onufrienko has now spent 389 days in orbit. Asked last week what he wanted to do first after returning to Earth, Walz said "hug and kiss my wife and hug my kids, (I'm) looking forward to seeing their faces." "We have about five hours of medical tests after that," he added. "I hope to visit with them a little more and I hope to get some terrestrial food!" All three Expedition said they were looking forward to enjoying their first taste of pizza in six-and-a-half months. As with all returning station fliers, Onufrienko, Walz and Bursch face a 45-day program of carefully monitored exercise, rehabilitation and medical tests. Walz and Bursch will live at home in Houston while Onufrienko plans to fly back to Russia in about two weeks to continue his rehabilitation under the care of Russian specialists. Taddeo said the astronauts will start out with low-stress exercises - stretching, massage and light aqua therapy - before ramping up to walking and, eventually, jogging. "And then somewhere in there, and this is at the discretion of the crew surgeon and the discretion of the trainers, you may start putting in some light resistive training," Taddeo said. "It's all individualized and you don't push a crew member faster than they can. But the goal is to get them back to their pre-flight baseline." During long-duration spaceflight, astronauts experience muscle atrophy, bone demineralization, neurovestibular changes and loss of blood volume. On-board exercise routines counteract some of these effects, but "it's not a perfect system and there are going to be some losses," Taddeo said. 03:50 p.m., 06/19/02, Update: Astronauts leave shuttle Shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell, pilot Paul Lockhart, flight engineer Franklin Chang-Diaz and French astronaut Philippe Perrin emerged from NASA's "people mover" crew transport vehicle one hour and 39 minutes after landing today for a brief walk-around inspection of the shuttle Endeavour. The three returning Expedition 4 space station crew members - back on Earth after a U.S. record 196 days aloft - remained aboard the crew transport vehicle as planned, under the care of flight surgeons monitoring their re-adaptation to gravity. After inspecting the orbiter, which appeared to come through its 18th re-entry in excellent condition, Cockrell took a moment to thank the landing team. "This is not the place we intended to land, but it's a great day here and we brought back a good vehicle," he said. "The expedition crew is looking great, I think everything is going well. We'll now have to go through the the effort of getting Endeavour back to Florida but other than that, I think we've got things on the road for its next mission. "We really appreciate the efforts from Dryden and Edwards Air Force Base to bring us in safely and to take care of us once we got here. So thank you very much, we'll be seeing you later." And with that, the astronauts left the runway. NASA's normal post-landing public affairs plan for space station crew rotation flights includes video clips of the returning station crew six to eight hours after landing. But that assumes an on-time landing. Endeavour's diversion to California came very late in the crew's day and whether the station astronauts will feel like making an appearance later this evening is not yet known. ===================================================================