Cautious NASA Extends Discovery Mission
“It’s not aluminized Mylar and it’s not from the covers,” Suffredini said of the shavings, which space station commander Peggy Whitson found to be iron-containing earlier today. “So that would tell you that, perhaps, it’s some of the steel from the bearings or the race (wheel) or some other area.”
As expected, NASA shuttle managers are looking more in detail at contaminated solar array rotary joint debris found during an initial inspection, which is requiring additional time. Initially, the space station officials wanted to extend the mission but it was not until a slightly later date that NASA agreed. Due to the time involved for a more thorough inspection and possible repair, the original mission’s purpose of a heat shield repair demonstration will be deferred at this date.
Both Scott Parazynski and Dough Wheelock are working in space for the third spacewalk today, with astronaut Wheelock attaching himself to the ISS’s robotic arm. Inside, the robit arm’s operators, Stephanie Wilson and George Zamka are moving it in the most careful of movements toward Discovery. Once arriving, Wheelock will ride the space station’s robotic arm out in space toward Discovery’s payload bay, unfasten the spare main bus switching unit (MBSU) to acquire a spare part of storage with storage on its external platform.
Meanwhile, Parazynski is inspecting the space station’s rail track for micrometerite damage that possibly may have damaged the left spacesuit glove thumb of Mastracchio, during last month’s shuttle mission for the International Space Station’s construction. He also observed a port-side rotating joint for the solar arrays, which is in excellent shape compared to Dan Tani’s starboard-side solar array joint he observed Sunday morning.
By 10:50 AM, Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock finished securing the spare part retrieved from the Discovery’s payload bay, while on Earth, mission controllers at Johnson Space Center began the loosening of one of two 115-foot black and gold solar arrays (part of the Port 6 or P6 solar array truss sements). Earlier today, the two “outdoor astronauts” had reattached the 35,000 pound piece of ISS, and are on the edge of completing the third spacewalk of the STS-120 mission.
According to Space.com, Pamela Melroy, the STS-120 commander affectionately known as “Pambo” by her crew, said the extra day in space is not a surprise and welcomes the change.
“Fortunately, we’ve already talked about this possibility before we flew,” Melroy said, noting the complexity of the mission at hand. “It’s another day in space docked to the space station, and that’s great.”
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 7:16 am and is filed under Mission Objectives, Space Agency News, Technical Concerns, The Gear to Get There. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
