NASA STS-124 Report #09 – 7:30 p.m. CDT Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

HOUSTON – The door to more experiments and more space opened up aboard the International Space Station.

The crew of STS-124 and Expedition 17 worked on activation and entry of the Kibo Japanese Pressurized Module. At 4:05 p.m. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg opened the hatch to the lab. After checking the atmosphere, all ten crew members entered the module to experience the enormous space. The largest module on the space station, it can hold 23 phone-booth sized operating racks, including 10 dedicated to experiments.

Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko installed the spare gas liquid separator pump into the station’s toilet at 10:27 a.m. After testing, Mission Control, Moscow indicated the toilet was repaired and ready for normal operations. The toilet had been working in a degraded fashion for the past couple weeks, prompting the replacement part’s addition to Discovery’s cargo.

Discovery Commander Mark Kelly and Pilot Ken Ham confirmed sensors on the end of the orbiter boom sensor system (OBSS) are working. The OBSS was retrieved from the outside of the station during Tuesday’s spacewalk, and it will remain attached to the shuttle’s robotic arm until it is used to conduct the late inspection of the shuttle’s heat shield on flight day 12.

As planned, astronauts Garrett Reisman and Greg Chamitoff replaced one of the beds in the carbon dioxide removal assembly that cleanses air onboard the station.

The crew is scheduled to go to sleep at 9:32 p.m. Wednesday and awaken at 5:32 a.m. Thursday. Spacewalkers Ron Garan and Mike Fossum will stay in the Quest airlock at a lower pressure overnight again to purge nitrogen from their systems.

The next status report will be issued after the crew awakens, or earlier if events warrant.