STS-123 MCC Status
Report #12
(16 March 2008) Now almost halfway
through their 16-day mission, and with two spacewalks under their belts, space
shuttle Endeavour's crew members will focus on getting the cargo they brought
to the station up and running.
The crew members were awakened at
2:43 p.m. with "God of Wonders" by Caedmon's Call. The song was played for
Endeavour's commander, Dominic Gorie.
Just before the crew went to sleep
Sunday morning, flight controllers on the ground began checking out systems on
Dextre - the Canadian Space Agency's Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator.
Those tests wrapped up at 6:18 a.m., and were all successful.
Mission
Specialist Robert L. Behnken and station Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman will
pick up where the ground teams left off. Behnken will go through a series of
tests to make sure the brakes on the joints on the two 11-foot arms on the
robot work. At 10:48 p.m., Behnken will stow Dextre in the configuration needed
for the third spacewalk of the mission by him and Rick Linnehan Monday night,
when the assembly of Dextre will be completed.
Behnken and Linnehan will
be starting their campout in the Quest Airlock for that spacewalk at 3:43 a.m.,
but before they do that, they'll join Mission Specialists Mike Foreman, Reisman
and station Commander Peggy Whitson for a set of interviews with reporters on
the ground. KMOX Radio in St. Louis, WEWS-TV in Cleveland and WBZ-TV in Boston
will be talking with the astronauts at 9:18 p.m. All three stations are all in
cities close to crew members' hometowns: Behnken, Linnehan and Foreman are from
Missouri, Massachusetts and Ohio, respectively.
Work inside the Japanese
Experiment Logistics Module, Pressurized Section, continues to be ahead of
schedule. Japanese Aerospace and Exploration Agency Astronaut Takao Doi will be
doing get-ahead tasks today for the STS-124 mission, when space shuttle
Discovery will bring up the second Japanese component, the large Kibo
pressurised laboratory.
The next STS-123 status report will be issued
near the end of the crew's day at about 6 a.m. Monday, or earlier if events
warrant.
(source: NASA)
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