STS-116 Space Shuttle Mission VNR / ESA TV Exchanges / 01-12-2006

The next transmission of the ESA TV Service will be:

01-Dec-06 10:10 – 10:25 GMT

STS-116 VNR

ESA TV Exchanges

Background information on the transmission:

Replay 1: 1 December 16:00-16:15 GMT

Replay 2: 2 December 11:30-11:45 GMT

The launch of Space Shuttle Discovery Flight STS-116 scheduled for the night of 7-8 December will bring Swedish ESA astronaut Christer Fuglesang to the ISS. This is possibly the most difficult flight among complex missions to complete the ISS in orbit.

With the arrival of STS-116, German ESA astronaut and ISS resident crew member Thomas Reiter will be replaced by Sunita Williams from NASA. Reiter will be returning back to Earth on the Shuttle together with Christer Fuglesang, after nearly six months in space.

The main objective of Flight STS-116 is to put into service two huge electricity-generating solar array panels, already onboard the station since September 2006. Switching this new electrical system on is a very difficult and complex task which requries Fuglesang and his NASA counterpart Robert Curbeamto perform two ?spacewalks? to rewire one half of the station each.

Today’s Video News Release provides all the background footage – including English soundbites by Fuglesang – to cover the story.

The script is online as a PDF file under http://television.esa.int/photos/EbS48555.pdf

A WMV preview file is online under http://esatv-movies.e-vision.nl/videos/mphi/celsius_mission_28-11-06_wmphigh.wmv

This ESA TV Exchanges feed is transmitted by the European Commission’s “Europe by Satellite” (EbS) service. You can find the complete transmission schedule and download scripts and shot lists, also for ESA TV items, from the EbS Web site at http://europa.eu.int/comm/ebs/schedule.cfm

More background information can be found on http://www.esa.int/celsius.

Transmission details:EUTELSAT HOT BIRD at 13° East (DVB/MPEG-2) Horizontal, F=12,476 MHz (MCPC, Europe by Satellite) SR=27,500 MS/sec, FEC=3/4

For further information, visit our website at http://television.esa.int. For other enquires, contact Claus Habfast, Tel +31 71 565 3838, Fax +31 71 565 6340, e-mail claus.habfast@esa.int.