Mon, Mar 17, 2008
STS-123 MCC Status Report #12
Now almost halfway through their
16-day mission, and with two spacewalks under their belts, space
shuttle Endeavour’s crew members will focus on getting the
cargo they brought to the station up and running.
The crew members were awakened at 2:43 p.m. with “God of
Wonders” by Caedmon’s Call. The song was played for
Endeavour’s commander, Dominic Gorie.
Just before the crew went to sleep Sunday morning, flight
controllers on the ground began checking out systems on Dextre
– the Canadian Space Agency’s Special Purpose Dexterous
Manipulator. Those tests wrapped up at 6:18 a.m., and were all
successful.
Mission Specialist Robert L. Behnken and station Flight Engineer
Garrett Reisman will pick up where the ground teams left off.
Behnken will go through a series of tests to make sure the brakes
on the joints on the two 11-foot arms on the robot work. At 10:48
p.m., Behnken will stow Dextre in the configuration needed for the
third spacewalk of the mission by him and Rick Linnehan Monday
night, when the assembly of Dextre will be completed.
Behnken and Linnehan will be starting their campout in the Quest
Airlock for that spacewalk at 3:43 a.m., but before they do that,
they’ll join Mission Specialists Mike Foreman, Reisman and
station Commander Peggy Whitson for a set of interviews with
reporters on the ground. KMOX Radio in St. Louis, WEWS-TV in
Cleveland and WBZ-TV in Boston will be talking with the astronauts
at 9:18 p.m. All three stations are all in cities close to crew
members’ hometowns: Behnken, Linnehan and Foreman are from
Missouri, Massachusetts and Ohio, respectively.
Work inside the Japanese Experiment Logistics Module,
Pressurized Section, continues to be ahead of schedule. Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takao Doi will be doing
get-ahead tasks today for the STS-124 mission, when space shuttle
Discovery will bring up the second Japanese component, the large
Kibo pressurized laboratory.
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