Shuttle Discovery’s seven astronauts plan to rendezvous with the International Space Station on Monday afternoon after having conducted routine inspections of their ship’s heat shielding Sunday.
Cmdr. Mark Polansky is scheduled to dock Discovery to the station at 4:05 p.m. CST while the two spacecraft soar more than 210 miles above Earth. A successful linkup will kick off a week of construction activity at the outpost, including a rewiring of the station’s main power circuits.
“We have a lot of work in front of us,” said Tony Ceccacci, NASA’s lead flight director for the mission, “but so far, so good.”
Engineers on the ground are continuing to examine data collected by a sensor-laden boom used for an inspection Sunday of Discovery’s heat shielding.
The boom was grappled by the end of the shuttle’s 50-foot robot arm, which maneuvered it around the ship’s exterior to conduct the survey.
A preliminary look by mission managers at some of the early inspection results turned up nothing of immediate concern.
“All of the reports that came in were that we had a very typical ascent,” said John Shannon, the deputy manager of NASA’s space shuttle program.
An ongoing review of video and radar data from Discovery’s liftoff has yet to detect any evidence of damage to the shuttle from launch debris.
A camera located on Discovery’s external fuel tank captured images of a few small bits of foam insulation breaking off the tank during the ship’s climb to orbit. However, none appeared to significantly affect the shuttle or were large enough to have done damage.
Sensors in the leading edges of the shuttle’s wings also detected four possible strikes during launch, but all measured only about a tenth of the force required to cause any harm.
“It’s almost exactly the behavior we’ve seen on the last couple of flights,” Shannon said.
With the exception of minor problems with the shuttle’s robot arm and coolant system, all of Discovery’s systems were working smoothly as the astronauts entered the second day of their planned 12-day flight. Three spacewalks are scheduled on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday to continue the station’s assembly.
The first spacewalk on the mission will involve installing an $11 million addition to the space lab, while the second and third will be for rewiring the station from its temporary power system to the permanent one.
