STS-105 Status Report #4 – 12 Aug 2001 – 6:00 AM CDT

The crew of Discovery,
trailing the International Space Station by less than 2,000 statute
miles, was awakened at 5:10 a.m. Central time to the sounds of “The
White Eagle,” a traditional Russian folk song played for Expedition
Three Pilot Vladimir Dezhurov. Dezhurov and his crewmates, Expedition
Three Commander Frank Culbertson and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin
are just hours from reaching their new home aboard the International
Space Station (ISS).

Discovery Commander
Scott Horowitz, Pilot Rick Sturckow and Mission Specialists Pat Forrester
and Dan Barry, along with the Expedition Three crew, will begin rendezvous
operations a little before 9 a.m. today. The shuttle will begin a final
approach to the station from a point about 9 miles behind the outpost
with the last major rendezvous maneuver scheduled at around 11:15 a.m.

With Discovery
about 600 feet directly below the station, Horowitz will fly the shuttle
in a quarter circle to a point in front of the complex. From there he
will very slowly and precisely maneuver Discovery toward the station,
pausing about 30 feet from the ISS to precisely align the docking mechanisms
of the two craft.

Docking is expected
to occur at 1:38 p.m. over the Indian Ocean just south of the Indonesian
island of Jawa. The hatches separating the two spacecraft are to be
opened around 3:30 p.m. allowing the current station residents, Expedition
Two Commander Yury Usachev and Flight Engineers Jim Voss and Susan Helms
to greet their replacements and the Discovery astronauts who will bring
them home after more than five months in space.

ISS flight controllers
are expected to ask the Expedition Two crew on Wednesday to try to reboot
one of three command and control computers which experienced a hard
drive problem last week and which has been put in standby mode with
no impact to station operations. If the reboot does not recover the
use of the hard drive, the crew may be asked to replace a component
in the computer with a spare being brought to the station on Discovery.
Two other command and control computers, a prime and a backup, are working
perfectly in support of U.S. segment systems.

Discovery is orbiting
the Earth every 90 minutes in good shape in pursuit of the International
Space Station. The next status report will be issued Sunday evening
prior the start of the two crew’s sleep period, or earlier, if events
warrant.