On the Bottom Half

Mission update.

STS-120 marched steadily along and all docked operations were completed with undocking occurring Monday morning. The crew are now preparing for landing by re-installing seats, testing thrusters, making orbital adjustments, and other general prep tasks for landing. The weather is forecast to be good at Kennedy, so they are calling for landing to take place there on Wednesday afternoon around 1300 EST.

4 of 5 scheduled spacewalks were completed. Scott Parazynski was able to jury-rig the torn P6 array section allowing it to be fully extended. It turns out that it is a problem to have the array partially extended - if not fully out, it is not properly tensioned to withstand the forces put on the station during docking of the Orbiter. But, that problem is solved and they are able to generate sufficient power to sustain the station while the other significant snafu - the SARJ (joint) on the other set of arrays - is dealt with.

Mission managers have elected to save the repairs until later while they work out exactly how to solve the problem with the S3/4 SARJ. All the moving parts - bearings, rings, gears, etc., are replaceable, so if that's what it comes to, a later mission will rebuild the main bearings, if you like. The other trick is to clean up the shavings already accumulated in the bearing housing. The obvious thing to do is vacuum up the bits, but Mike Suffredini, ISS Program Manager, has this to say on the clean up: "Let's talk about vacuum cleaners in a vacuum later". In the meantime, the P3/4/6 array setup can sustain the station, allowing a minimisation of the sun-tracking movement of the other array.

So, all eyes to landing on Wednesday! The Mission Management Team gave the all clear to the thermal protection system on mission day 3 or so, so there aren't any problems expected there.

posted by Kyle @ 17:30