Thursday will see the second of Endeavour’s four spacewalks. NASA reports:
Image above: STS-126 mission specialists Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper and Steve Bowen participate in interviews with the Associated Press, KMSP-TV in Minneapolis and WCVB-TV in Boston. Photo credit: NASA TV
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The STS-126 and Expedition 18 crews worked Wednesday to prepare the station for larger crews. They also prepared for the second spacewalk of the mission.
Expedition 18 flight engineer Sandra Magnus and her predecessor Greg Chamitoff installed two new bedrooms in the Harmony node. Meanwhile, STS-126 mission specialist Don Pettit and Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke spent the bulk of the day configuring hardware on the new Water Recovery System.
The crews also moved equipment and supplies between the two spacecraft.
Mission specialists Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper and Shane Kimbrough will camp out overnight in the station’s Quest Airlock in preparation for the second spacewalk of the mission. The purpose of this “camp out” is to purge the nitrogen from their bodies before their planned exit Thursday at 1:45 p.m. EST. Piper and mission specialist Steve Bowen completed the mission’s first spacewalk Tuesday.
Flight Day 5 pics and video are up at the JSC Gallery. Discussion here. Status Report #12 here. Check the links at right for play-by-play and NASA TV.
On 20 Nov 1998, the first module of the International Space Station, Zarya, was launched atop a Russian Proton-K rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Since then, many flights have been launched for assembly, repair, resupply, and crew transfers. The Station is a proving ground for technologies that will be needed for future voyages to the Moon and Mars, and it is a model for international cooperation here on Earth. Right now, there are 10 people in space, preparing the Station to accommodate twice the current crew of 3. Happy Birthday, ISS!
