NASA STS-126 Report #25 Wednesday, November 26, 2008 – 5:00 p.m. CST
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas
HOUSTON – The International Space Station’s moving van, Leonardo, is back in Endeavour’s payload bay, ready to return materials to Earth.
Between Leonardo and the shuttle’s middeck, 16,390 pounds of equipment were delivered to the station, much of it for future expansion of the station’s crew. The crew members packed away 3,642 pounds of materials to be returned to Earth.
Mission Specialists Don Pettit and Shane Kimbrough used the station’s Canadarm2 to move the pressurized cargo module. It was removed from the Harmony module and placed in the shuttle’s cargo bay at 4:52 p.m.
Lead spacewalker Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper packed up equipment and supplies used for the four spacewalks and moved them to Endeavour for return.
Station Flight Engineer Sandra Magnus continued work on the station’s new regenerative life support system. She drained a condensate collection tank to create the optimum ratio of condensate and distillate from the Urine Processor Assembly (UPA) and gathered additional water samples for testing. The UPA ran yesterday, completing three cycles after troubleshooting steps restored its operation. There are no plans to run it again during the joint mission as all the samples needed have been taken.
Station Commander Mike Fincke and cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov practiced with the backup manual docking system as part of routine preparations for the arrival of the automated ISS Progress 31 cargo spacecraft. The vehicle launched to the station earlier today and is set to dock on Sunday. One of several antennas associated with the Kurs automated rendezvous system was eventually extended and secured in place. It had not deployed automatically as expected.
All ten crew members will have light duty in the morning on Thanksgiving Day. They have plans to join together for a meal of smoked turkey, candied yams, green beans and mushrooms, cornbread dressing, cranapple dessert and tea with sugar.
The shuttle and station crews will part ways and close hatches in the afternoon for undocking Friday.
Endeavour’s crew is scheduled to go to bed at 9:55 p.m. and be awakened at 5:55 a.m. Thursday. The next shuttle status report will be issued after the crew awakens, or earlier if events warrant.
