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Station to receive cargo-delivery module tonight
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: April 7, 2010


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Imagery analysts completed an assessment of the shuttle Discovery's right wing heat shield components late Wednesday and cleared the astronauts to press ahead with work to move a cargo module from the shuttle's payload bay to the International Space Station as planned.

Operating the station's robot arm from a work station in the U.S. Destiny lab module, Stephanie Wilson and Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki latched onto the Leonardo multi-purpose logistics module, or MPLM, around 10:30 p.m. EDT.

After carefully pulling the 27,274-pound module from Discovery's cargo bay, Wilson and Yamazaki will maneuver it into position for attachment to the station's Harmony module just after midnight.

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Discovery's right wing had to be given a clean bill of health before the module's move because of robot arm clearance issues in case any problems were discovered that required a more detailed, "focused" inspection using a 50-foot-long sensor boom attached to the shuttle's robot arm.

With the Leonardo module attached to the station, clearance issues would have prevented an additional right-wing inspection. But as it turned out, no such inspection will be needed.

NASA's Damage Assessment Team is still plowing through data from an inspection of the shuttle's nose cap and wing leading edge panels carried out Tuesday and a photo-survey of tiles on the shuttle's belly that was conducted during the shuttle's final approach to the station early Wednesday.

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