STS-110 Status Report #08 April 12, 2002 – 4:30 a.m. CDT
After successful installation of the S-Zero (S0) Truss and a spacewalk on Thursday, the focus of today’s activities will shift from external construction of the International Space Station to the transfer of equipment, supplies and experiments between the space shuttle Atlantis and the orbiting laboratory.
The Atlantis crew – Commander Mike Bloomfield, Pilot Steve Frick, and mission specialists Ellen Ochoa, Rex Walheim, Lee Morin, Jerry Ross and Steve Smith – was awakened at 3:44 a.m. Central time by the song “Testify to Love,” by Wynonna Judd played for Bloomfield from his family. On board the station, the Expedition 4 crew, Commander Yury Onufrienko and flight engineers Carl Walz and Dan Bursch, awoke about 30 minutes later.
Morin and Ross will move an experimental plant growth chamber to a rack inside the station’s Destiny lab. This experiment will replace a protein crystal growth experiment that will return to Earth on board Atlantis. Walheim and Ochoa will install a freezer in the lab for future crystal samples.
Oxygen and nitrogen will be transferred from Atlantis to the station to refill the airlock high-pressure tanks with the gasses breathed by spacewalkers. The crew will also prepare for and review the procedures for the next two spacewalks, on Saturday and Sunday, to continue hookup of the S0 Truss.
Systems on the S0 Truss are functioning well after its installation Thursday. Friday, ground controllers will activate the Global Positioning System and the Rate Gyro Assembly located on S0 that will begin providing navigation and attitude data for the station.
Crewmembers will take a break to talk with reporters from MSNBC, CBS Radio Network and WWJ-TV in Detroit at 11:28 a.m. At 1 p.m. NASA television will switch to live coverage of NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe’s address on “Pioneering the Future.” The address will be replayed on NASA TV at 3 p.m.
After two hours of time off during the afternoon, both crews are scheduled to begin their sleep period at 7:44 p.m.
The next STS-110 mission status report will be issued Friday afternoon, or earlier if events warrant.
