Craft Docks; Astronauts Number 13 on Station
Click here for more news / Clique aqui para mais notícias
The space shuttle Endeavour docked with the International Space Station on Friday, marking the first time that 13 people have been floating around in one place in outer space.
As the Endeavour approached, it did a slow back flip to reveal a clean belly, undamaged by the flurry of foam that fell off the external tank on Wednesday during liftoff.
“I’m really not surprised,” the shuttle program manager, John Shannon, said in a news conference Friday.
Most of the foam debris came from the central intertank region between the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks where the foam is only half an inch thick.
“In reality, they’re very low mass, very lightweight,” Mr. Shannon said.
The engineers will continue to examine the images, but nothing worrisome has turned up so far.
On Friday evening, the shuttle and station moved out of the way of a piece of space debris headed their way. The debris, which had been tracked since Thursday, was projected to pass close enough that managers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided to fire the shuttle’s thrusters at 8:30 p.m. to lift the station by about a mile.
The Endeavour docked at the space station Friday at 1:47 p.m. Eastern time. Soon afterwards, Mark L. Polansky of the Air Force, who has been using the Twitter microblogging service to send out updates of the mission, wrote, “From orbit: Docked successfully w/ISS a few minutes ago. It will take awhile before we can open the hatches, but it’s great to be here.”
After checking for leaks, astronauts opened the final hatch two hours later.
With the Endeavour’s arrival and its crew of seven, a record was set for the most people in orbit on a single space station. A Soyuz spacecraft carried three people to the station in May, doubling the number of permanent crew members to six.
During the welcome ceremony, Col. Gennady I. Padalka of the Russian Air Force rang the station’s bell, a practice transferred from naval traditions. “It’s a remarkable event, not only for us but for the whole space program because this is the next great stage of space station assembly,” Colonel Padalka said.
Mr. Polansky replied, “Thank you, Gennady. Thirteen is a pretty big number, but it’s going to be an outstanding visit for us.”
While there was a lot of crowded hugging, NASA officials said there was plenty of room for everyone on the crew to get their work done. “It’s easy to forget how big the space station has gotten,” said Paul Dye, the lead flight director.
The Endeavour carried up the final pieces of a Japanese laboratory. The “front porch” of the laboratory is to hold experimental samples exposed to the extremes of outer space. The shuttle astronauts will also replace batteries on one of the solar wings. The first spacewalk is planned for Saturday.
One of the shuttle’s three fuel cells, which behaved somewhat unusually before launching, continues to exhibit slightly abnormal performance, but “it’s still within the limits,” Mr. Dye said. “We’re not expecting any problems with it.”
While the Endeavour escaped damage from the falling foam, the next shuttle flight, of the Discovery, could be delayed as engineers check the external tank that is to be used. If they find the same problems with adhesion of the foam to the tank, shuttle managers could decide to repair the faulty sections or to swap the tank for another one.
The Discovery flight was scheduled for Aug. 18, but it is likely to slip to at least Aug. 21 because a schedule conflict with a Delta IV rocket, Mr. Shannon said. With the delays in the Endeavour’s getting to orbit, a delay of a few days “makes a lot of sense,” Mr. Shannon said.
