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Shuttle Endeavour heads for space station this morning BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: May 18, 2011 
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL--The shuttle Endeavour closed in on the International Space Station early Wednesday, overtaking the lab complex from the rear to set up a docking at 6:16 a.m. EDT (GMT-4). Commander Mark Kelly and pilot Gregory Johnson plan to begin the terminal phase of a two-day rendezvous procedure with a rocket firing at 3:37 a.m. to begin closing the final 9.2 miles.
"I love that song, and I love being in space!" Johnson radioed Houston. "That song's a favorite of my son Matt's and I know he and his family had a lot to do with sending that one up to us. It was a beautiful song. Matt, happy birthday tomorrow. Sorry I'm going to miss that one, but we'll catch up. And I want to say, that's a perfect way to start an exciting rendezvous day." As with all post-Columbia space station approaches, Kelly plans to briefly pause Endeavour's approach at a distance of about 600 feet directly below the lab complex for a computer-assisted back flip maneuver that will expose heat shield tiles on the belly of the shuttle to the station. Expedition 27 crew members Paolo Nespoli and Catherine Coleman, working in the Russian Zvezda command module, plan to photograph protective tiles on the belly of the orbiter with powerful telephoto lenses as it flips about to help engineers complete an on-going assessment of the shuttle's heat shield. Throughout the final stages of today's approach, Andrew Feustel planned to monitor navigation sensors and software designed for NASA's post-shuttle Orion exploration capsule to help engineers calibrate the system. After undocking May 29, the new system will be put to the test during a re-rendezvous exercise to verify its performance in real-world conditions. Following the rendezvous pitch maneuver, or RPM, Kelly plans to guide Endeavour up to a point about 300 feet directly in front of the space station with the orbiter's nose pointed toward deep space and its payload bay toward the station. Working from Endeavour's aft flight deck, Kelly then will manually guide the orbiter to a docking at the space station's forward port to cap a two-day rendezvous that began Monday with liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center. As usual with shuttle-station linkups, it will take a full orbit to complete leak checks to make sure the two spacecraft are firmly locked together before hatches can be opened around 8:36 a.m. Standing by in the station's Harmony module to welcome Kelly, Johnson, Feustel, Michael Fincke, Gregory Chamitoff, and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori aboard will be Expedition 27 commander Dmitry Kondratyev and his five crewmates, Andrey Borisenko, Alexander Samokutyaev, Ronald Garan, Nespoli and Coleman. After a safety briefing, the combined crews will get to work, transferring spacesuits from Endeavour to the station and using both vehicles' robot arms to move a massive pallet of spare components from the shuttle's cargo bay to an attachment point on the left side of the station's power truss. The shuttle's other primary payload, the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer cosmic ray detector, will be attached to the right side of the truss on Thursday. In the midst of a busy first few days of docked activity, three of the station's crew members -- Coleman, Nespoli and Kondratyev -- will be gearing up to undock and return to Earth Monday aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 ferry craft. Because the departing crew members need to adjust their sleep cycle to synch up with the landing day timeline -- and because of a two-week launch delay for the Endeavour astronauts -- the two crews are working in staggered shifts. Garan, assisting the shuttle crew during the early portion of the docked flight, will go to bed at 2:26 p.m., followed a half hour later by Kelly and his crewmates. The station crew plans to go to bed at 5:31 p.m. After the Soyuz TMA-20 departure, the remaining station crew members will adjust their sleep cycles to synch up with the shuttle crew. Today's mission status briefing is planned for 9 a.m., followed by an update from NASA's Mission Management Team at 4 p.m. Here is an updated timeline of the crew's planned activities for flight day three (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision C of the NASA television schedule; best viewed with fixed-width font): DATE/EDT...DD...HH...MM...SS...EVENT 05/17 10:56 PM...01...14...00...00...STS crew wakeup 05/18 12:21 AM...01...15...25...00...Group B computer powerup 12:36 AM...01...15...40...00...Rendezvous timeline begins 01:46 AM...01...16...50...00...Spacesuit removal from airlock 02:06 AM...01...17...10...56...NC-4 rendezvous rocket firing 03:37 AM...01...18...41...45...Ti 03:41 AM...01...18...45...00...ISS daily planning conference 03:57 AM...01...19...01...45...MC1 04:11 AM...01...19...15...43...Range = 33,000 ft 04:13 AM...01...19...17...47...Sunset 04:24 AM...01...19...28...45...Range = 20,000 ft 04:27 AM...01...19...31...39...MC2 04:36 AM...01...19...40...21...Range = 10,000 ft 04:44 AM...01...19...48...39...MC3 04:45 AM...01...19...49...00...Range = 5,000 ft 04:48 AM...01...19...52...20...Sunrise 04:50 AM...01...19...54...29...Range = 3,000 ft 04:54 AM...01...19...58...39...MC4 04:58 AM...01...20...02...39...Range = 1,500 ft 05:01 AM...01...20...05...00...RPM start window open 05:03 AM...01...20...07...39...Range = 1,000 ft 05:06 AM...01...20...10...00...Begin approach timeline 05:06 AM...01...20...10...39...KU to low power (800 ft) 05:07 AM...01...20...11...39...Shuttle directly below ISS (725 ft) 05:12 AM...01...20...16...51...Range = 600 ft 05:14 AM...01...20...18...45...Start pitch maneuver 05:16 AM...01...20...20...47...Noon 05:22 AM...01...20...26...45...End pitch maneuver 05:24 AM...01...20...28...34...RPM full photo window close 05:25 AM...01...20...29...21...Initiate TORVA (575 ft) 05:32 AM...01...20...36...58...RPM start window close 05:36 AM...01...20...40...51...Shuttle directly in front of ISS (310 ft) 05:37 AM...01...20...41...41...Range = 300 ft 05:40 AM...01...20...44...23...Start - Sun In camera D/window 1 05:41 AM...01...20...45...51...Range = 250 ft 05:45 AM...01...20...49...04...End - Sun In camera D/window 1 05:45 AM...01...20...49...14...Sunset 05:46 AM...01...20...50...01...Range = 200 ft 05:48 AM...01...20...52...31...Range = 170 ft 05:50 AM...01...20...54...11...Range = 150 ft 05:54 AM...01...20...58...21...Range = 100 ft 05:57 AM...01...21...01...21...Range = 75 ft 06:01 AM...01...21...05...31...Range = 50 ft 06:04 AM...01...21...08...51...Range (30 ft); start stationkeeping 06:09 AM...01...21...13...51...End stationkeeping; push to dock 06:14 AM...01...21...18...11...Range = 10 ft 06:16 AM...01...21...20...00...DOCKING 06:19 AM...01...21...23...47...Sunrise 06:36 AM...01...21...40...00...Leak checks 06:36 AM...01...21...40...00...Orbiter docking system prepped for ingress 07:06 AM...01...22...10...00...Group B computer powerdown 07:36 AM...01...22...40...00...Hatch open 08:36 AM...01...23...40...00...Welcome aboard! 08:46 AM...01...23...50...00...Safety briefing 09:00 AM...02...00...04...00...Mission status briefing on NASA TV 09:16 AM...02...00...20...00...Shuttle arm (SRMS) unberths cargo pallet (ELC-3) 09:56 AM...02...01...00...00...SRMS hands ELC-3 to station arm (SSRMS) 10:21 AM...02...01...25...00...SRMS ungrapples ELC-3 10:31 AM...02...01...35...00...SSRMS maneuvers to install ELC-3 11:41 AM...02...02...45...00...ELC-3 install (stage one) 11:51 AM...02...02...55...00...Video playback ops 11:56 AM...02...03...00...00...ELC-3 install (stage two) 12:16 PM...02...03...20...00...SSRMS ungrapples ELC-3 12:21 PM...02...03...25...00...ELC-3 power cable mate 02:56 PM...02...06...00...00...STS crew sleep begins 03:41 PM...02...06...45...00...ISS evening planning conference 04:00 PM...02...07...04...00...Mission Management Team briefing on NASA TV 05:00 PM...02...08...04...00...Daily highlights reel on NASA TV 05:31 PM...02...08...35...00...ISS crew sleep begins 09:45 PM...02...12...49...00...ISS flight director update 10:40 PM...02...13...44...00...ISS flight director update replay 10:56 PM...02...14...00...00...Endeavour crew/Garan wakeup
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VIDEO:
ASTRONAUTS' FLIGHT DAY 2 HOME MOVIES 