ANN REALTIME REPORTING 12.11.06 1711 EST: Moments
ago, the space shuttle Discovery's two-day chase of the International Space
Station ended, as the orbiter docked with the ISS while flying over south
central China, northwest of Bangladesh.
The
STS-116 crew began rendezvous operations around 11:37 am Monday. Commander Mark
Polansky began guiding Discovery through a back-flip maneuver (shown below)
about an hour before the docking, to allow the station's Expedition 14 crew to
take pictures of Discovery’s heat shield.
Engineers
will analyze those images closely, to determine if Discovery sustained any
appreciable damage to its heat shield during launch. Images taken by the
shuttle’s robotic arm and an extension boom-mounted sensor system Sunday showed
no damage to heat shielding on Discovery's wing leading edges and nose.
Discovery
is carrying the P5 integrated truss structure in its payload bay. The STS-116
crew will conduct three spacewalks to install the P5 and to reconfigure and
redistribute power generated by the station.
Also
onboard the shuttle is the station’s next crew member. Astronaut Sunita
Williams will join the Expedition 14 crew about an hour after she enters the
station for the first time. The hatches between Discovery and the station are
slated to open at about 7:02 pm.
A
little after 8:15 pm EST, Discovery’s robotic arm will lift the 4,100-pound P5
truss segment from the shuttle's cargo bay. It will be handed off to the
station’s arm, where it will stay during the crews’ sleep period, in
preparation for its installation on Tuesday.
To
prepare for the mission's first spacewalk, astronauts Bob Curbeam and Christer
Fuglesang will spend Monday night in the station’s airlock, where pressure will
be reduced to 10.2 psi -- roughly equal to the atmosphere on Earth at about
10,000 feet MSL. The airlock “campout” at the lower pressure protects against
decompression sickness, commonly called "the bends," as the two go to
the even lower pressure of spacesuits on Tuesday.