NASA STS-118 Status Report #18 Friday, August 17, 2007 – 4:30 a.m. CDT

Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

After mission managers decided on Thursday that no repair of Endeavour’s heat resistant tiles is necessary, astronauts today will work to prepare for a Saturday spacewalk much like the one initially planned.

The Endeavour crew, Commander Scott Kelly, Pilot Charles Hobaugh, and Mission Specialists Tracy Caldwell, Rick Mastracchio, Dave Williams, Barbara Morgan and Alvin Drew, and station Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineers Oleg Kotov and Clay Anderson, were awakened at 4:08 a.m. CDT by “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” performed by KT Tunstall, for Caldwell.

The mission’s fourth spacewalk will be done by Williams of the Canadian Space Agency and Anderson. Caldwell will serve as the intravehicular officer, guiding spacewalkers through their tasks and keeping them on the timeline.

Spacewalk tasks include installing an External Wireless Instrumentation System antenna, installing a stand for the shuttle’s robotic arm extension boom, bolting down debris shields on the Unity node and the U.S. laboratory Destiny and retrieving two containers of the Materials ISS Experiment.

Caldwell and the spacewalkers will spend about an hour and a half this morning preparing spacewalking tools. Late in their day, all 10 shuttle and station crew members will do a review of spacewalk procedures. Then Williams and Anderson will begin the standard “campout,” spending the night in the Quest airlock.

Substantial blocks of transfer time are scheduled for six crew members to continue moving equipment and supplies between the two spacecraft.

Crew members will talk with reporters at NASA centers and Canadian Space Agency headquarters in Montreal. The 40-minute event begins at 12:34 p.m.

The next status report will be issued Friday evening or earlier if events warrant.