STS-100 Status Report #09 – 23 Apr 2001 – 6:00 PM CDT

Two elements built
by two countries adorn the International Space Station (ISS) tonight after
Endeavour’s astronauts and the Station’s Expedition Two crew
worked throughout the day to bring the complex one step closer to an independent
robotic capability.

The new 57-foot long
Canadian-built Canadarm2 robot arm took its first step this morning, “walking
off” a pallet mounted at the top of the Destiny Laboratory to grab
onto an electrical grapple fixture on Destiny capable of providing data,
power and telemetry to the dexterous appendage.

With Expedition Two
Flight Engineer Susan Helms sending commands from a workstation inside
Destiny, the arm began to move off the pallet at 6:13 a.m. Central time.
Three hours later, after an extensive checkout of all of its new joints,
the arm affixed itself to the Destiny grapple point where it will remain
overnight in preparation for its first active grappling of a payload —
the pallet on which it was launched — on Tuesday.

As Canadarm2 was
completing its work for the day, Mission Specialist Scott Parazynski used
Endeavour’s slightly smaller robot arm to latch onto the Italian-built
Raffaello cargo module in the Shuttle’s payload bay. Raffaello was lifted
out of the bay and was attached to a docking port on the Station’s Unity
module at 11:00 a.m., setting the stage for Expedition Commander Yury
Usachev, and Flight Engineers Jim Voss and Helms to begin unloading three
tons of supplies beginning tomorrow. Parazynski was assisted by European
Space Agency astronaut Umberto Guidoni, who will take the lead in assisting
the Station crewmembers in the unloading of Raffaello and the repacking
of discarded items in the module later this week.

Parazynski and Canadian
Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield prepared for their second spacewalk
of the mission tomorrow by checking out their tools and spacesuits. They
are scheduled to emerge from Endeavour’s airlock around 8 a.m. Tuesday
for a planned 6 ½ hour excursion to rewire the base of the newly
installed Canadarm2 so it can operate from its new home on the Destiny
Laboratory, to remove a communications antenna from Unity which is no
longer needed and to mount a spare electrical converter unit on a stowage
platform on Destiny for future Station use.

Earlier today, Commander
Kent Rominger, Pilot Jeff Ashby and Mission Specialists John Phillips
and Yuri Lonchakov of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency led the way
as hatches swung open between Endeavour and the ISS at 4:25 a.m., allowing
the ten crewmembers to greet one another for the first time. Some supplies
carried to the Station aboard Endeavour were transferred throughout the
day until the hatches once again were closed at 2:26 p.m. after 10 hours
of joint operations. The hatch closure enabled the Shuttle’s cabin pressure
to be lowered to support tomorrow’s spacewalk.

Near the end of the
day, Rominger and Ashby supervised a one-hour firing of Endeavour’s
jets to gently raise the orbit of the ISS about 2 ½ statute miles,
from 237.8 statute miles to 240.3 statute miles. Two more reboosts are
planned on Wednesday and Thursday to leave the Station at the correct
altitude for the arrival of a Russian-commanded “taxi” crew
next week delivering a fresh Soyuz return vehicle to the complex.

Both crews are scheduled
to end their day just after 6:30 p.m. and will be awakened early Tuesday
morning. Both spacecraft are in excellent shape orbiting the Earth every
92 minutes.

The next status report
will be issued tomorrow morning after crew wakeup, or sooner, if events
warrant.