





Shuttle crew repacking cargo module for Earth return

BY WILLIAM HARWOOD

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION

Posted: July 16, 2011



Work to move supplies and equipment into the International Space Station and to reload a shuttle cargo module with trash, packing material and no-longer-needed gear is about 78 percent complete as the Atlantis astronauts move into the home stretch of NASA's final shuttle mission.

Credit: NASA



The four-member crew was awakened at 11:29 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) Friday by Beyonce Knowles' "Run the World (Girls)" beamed up from mission control. "Good morning Atlantis," the Houston native said in a recorded message to the crew. "This is Beyonce. Sandy, Chris, Doug and Rex, you inspire all of us to dare to live our dreams, to know that we're smart enough and strong enough to achieve them. This song is especially for my girl Sandy (Magnus) and all the women who've taken us to space with them, and the girls who are our future explorers." "And good morning, Houston, and a big thanks to Beyonce for taking some time out of her schedule to record us a greeting," Magnus replied. "We're ready for another day here on Atlantis and hopefully, with the team at NASA, we can keep our inspirational work up for the young people of America." Space station Flight Director Courtenay McMillan said the astronauts are ahead of schedule with their logistics transfer work and will focus Saturday on packing up the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module for return to Earth aboard Atlantis. "Transfer is going really well," McMillan said. "We're at about, I think the magic number right now is 78 percent complete and the crew is really focusing on packing the MPLM at this point. So pretty much everything that we need on the station is moved over, almost everything is moved over. For the MPLM, they're really focusing on getting it configured for return." With nearly five tons of supplies and equipment moved into the space station, "there's a lot of stuff now ... and a lot of it is just temporarily stowed in convenient locations to get the transfer done," McMillan said. "We're going to try to start getting the crew into basically unpacking that and putting it in its final location so things are a little better organized and it will not take them so much time to find things after undocking." With any luck, she added, "they'll be able to use some of the (logistics) transfer time today to get that done on the station side while the shuttle crew are packing up the MPLM." The station crew also planned to continue repair work on a high-tech treadmill in the Russian segment of the lab complex that failed earlier. A new gyroscope for the treadmill's vibration isolation system was delivered by the Atlantis astronauts, but that did not solve the problem. "So today we've got a little bit of troubleshooting, then we're going to go after the next box that could be causing a problem, which is the vibration isolation system controller unit, which basically is the brains that powers the vibration isolation system, including the gyro," McMillan said. Flight controllers are continuing to assess the health of a shuttle flight computer that shut down Thursday evening. General Purpose Computer No. 4 was successfully restarted Friday and placed in standby mode, but engineers studying telemetry from the system have not yet figured out what went wrong. Later today, GPC-4 likely will be taken out of standby mode for additional analysis. "So far, no definitive cause for its unexpected shutdown late in the day on Thursday has been identified, but the leading cause ... could be radiation, simply a transient shutdown of that general purpose computer," said Rob Navias, NASA's mission control commentator. "GPC-4 is likely to be expanded into the set of operational general purpose computers, brought up from its freeze-dried, or hibernated, mode later today and could run for about seven hours so more data can be collected on its general health." Here is an updated timeline of the crew's planned activities for flight day nine (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision J of the NASA television schedule; best viewed with fixed-width font): DATE/EDT...DD...HH...MM...SS...EVENT 07/15 11:29 PM...07...12...00...00...Crew wakeup 07/16 01:04 AM...07...13...35...00...ISS daily planning conference 02:49 AM...07...15...20...00...MPLM cargo transfers resume 06:24 AM...07...18...55...00...Crew choice recording 06:54 AM...07...19...25...00...Joint crew meal 07:54 AM...07...20...25...00...MPLM cargo transfers resume 07:54 AM...07...20...25...00...Russian EVA-29 tools configured 11:00 AM...07...23...31...00...Replay of Atlantis flag tribute 11:44 AM...08...00...15...00...Transfer tagup 12:00 PM...08...00...31...00...Replay of Atlantis tribute to naval aviation 01:00 PM...08...01...31...00...Replay of Atlantis flag tribute 02:29 PM...08...03...00...00...ISS crew sleep begins 03:30 PM...08...04...01...00...Mission status briefing on NASA TV 02:59 PM...08...03...30...00...STS crew sleep begins 05:00 PM...09...05...31...00...Flight day 9 highlights on NASA TV 08:00 PM...08...08...31...00..."The Space Shuttle" video on NASA TV 10:00 PM...08...10...31...00..."Launching our Dreams" video on NASA TV 10:59 PM...08...11...30...00...Crew wakeup 11:30 PM...08...12...01...00...Flight director update on NASA TV

Additional coverage for subscribers:

VIDEO: FLIGHT DAY 8 HIGHLIGHTS REEL PLAY

VIDEO: PRESIDENT OBAMA CALLS THE ASTRONAUTS IN SPACE PLAY

VIDEO: SHUTTLE AND STATION CREW NEWS CONFERENCE PLAY

VIDEO: FRIDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY

VIDEO: PHILLY TV AND RADIO AND REUTERS INTERVIEWS PLAY

VIDEO: CBS NEWS RADIO, PHILLY TV AND THE AP INTERVIEWS PLAY

VIDEO: FRIDAY MORNING FLIGHT DIRECTOR UPDATE PLAY



VIDEO: FLIGHT DAY 7 HIGHLIGHTS REEL PLAY

VIDEO: CHICAGO, OAKLAND AND PHILLY TV INTERVIEWS PLAY

VIDEO: FOX NEWS RADIO AND ST. LOUIS TV INTERVIEWS PLAY

VIDEO: THURSDAY MORNING FLIGHT DIRECTOR UPDATE PLAY



VIDEO: FLIGHT DAY 6 HIGHLIGHTS REEL PLAY

VIDEO: WEDNESDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY

VIDEO: WEDNESDAY MORNING FLIGHT DIRECTOR UPDATE PLAY



VIDEO: FLIGHT DAY 5 HIGHLIGHTS REEL PLAY

VIDEO: TUESDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY

VIDEO: FINAL SHUTTLE-ERA SPACEWALK CONCLUDES PLAY

VIDEO: PROTECTIVE COVER PUT ON VACANT DOCKING PORT PLAY

VIDEO: FIXING SNAGGED WIRE ON ZARYA GRAPPLE FIXTURE PLAY

VIDEO: SPACEWALKER GOES SIGHT-SEEING HIGH ABOVE EARTH PLAY

VIDEO: SATELLITE SERVICING DEMONSTRATOR GIVEN TO DEXTRE PLAY

VIDEO: ROBOTIC REFUELING MISSION MOVED TO THE STATION PLAY

VIDEO: SPACEWALKERS SWAP POSITIONS ABOARD ROBOT ARM PLAY

VIDEO: PUMP STOWED IN ATLANTIS BAY FOR RETURN TO EARTH PLAY

VIDEO: STUNNING VIEWS OF ASTRONAUT RIDING ROBOT ARM PLAY

VIDEO: FAILED PUMP FREED FROM STORAGE BOX PLAY

VIDEO: SPACEWALK NO. 1 GETS UNDERWAY PLAY

VIDEO: STEP-BY-STEP PREVIEW OF SPACEWALK PLAY

VIDEO: TUESDAY MORNING FLIGHT DIRECTOR UPDATE PLAY



VIDEO: FLIGHT DAY 4 HIGHLIGHTS REEL PLAY

VIDEO: MONDAY'S MISSION MANAGEMENT TEAM UPDATE PLAY

VIDEO: MONDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY

VIDEO: RAFFAELLO MODULE CONNECTED TO STATION PLAY

VIDEO: CARGO-DELIVERY MODULE UNBERTHED FROM ATLANTIS PLAY

VIDEO: ROBOT ARM GRAPPLES MODULE IN SHUTTLE BAY PLAY

VIDEO: MONDAY MORNING FLIGHT DIRECTOR UPDATE PLAY



VIDEO: FLIGHT DAY 3 HIGHLIGHTS REEL PLAY

VIDEO: SUNDAY'S MISSION MANAGEMENT TEAM UPDATE PLAY

VIDEO: SUNDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY

VIDEO: ATLANTIS CREW WELCOMED ABOARD STATION PLAY

VIDEO: DOCKING OF SHUTTLE TO STATION AS SEEN LIVE PLAY

VIDEO: SHUTTLE ARCS OUT IN FRONT OF SPACE STATION PLAY

VIDEO: ATLANTIS PERFORMS THE 360-DEGREE BACKFLIP PLAY



VIDEO: FLIGHT DAY 2 HIGHLIGHTS REEL PLAY

VIDEO: SATURDAY'S MISSION MANAGEMENT TEAM UPDATE PLAY

VIDEO: SATURDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY





VIDEO: FLIGHT DAY 1 HIGHLIGHTS REEL PLAY

VIDEO: THE FULL STS-135 LAUNCH EXPERIENCE PLAY

VIDEO: SHUTTLE ATLANTIS BLASTS OFF! PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: GO INSIDE MISSION CONTROL DURING LAUNCH PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: THE POST-LAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE PLAY



VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: VAB ROOF PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PRESS SITE PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PAD PERIMETER PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: BEACH TRACKER PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PAD FRONT CAMERA PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PAD CAMERA 070 PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PAD CAMERA 071 PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: UCS-23 TRACKER PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: WEST TOWER PLAY | HI-DEF



VIDEO: COUNTDOWN PREVIEW AND WEATHER FORECAST BRIEFING PLAY

VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS ARRIVE AT LAUNCH SITE PLAY

VIDEO: PRE-FLIGHT INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS FERGUSON PLAY

VIDEO: PRE-FLIGHT INTERVIEW WITH DOUG HURLEY PLAY

VIDEO: PRE-FLIGHT INTERVIEW WITH SANDY MAGNUS PLAY

VIDEO: PRE-FLIGHT INTERVIEW WITH REX WALHEIM PLAY



VIDEO: SHUTTLE AND STATION PROGRAM BRIEFING PLAY

VIDEO: THE STS-135 MISSION OVERVIEW PRESENTATIONS PLAY

VIDEO: PREVIEW BRIEFING ON MISSION'S SPACEWALK PLAY

VIDEO: THE ASTRONAUTS' PRE-FLIGHT NEWS BRIEFING PLAY



VIDEO: CREW CHATS WITH PRESS AT LAUNCH PAD PLAY

VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS ARRIVE FOR PRACTICE COUNT PLAY | HI-DEF



VIDEO: HEAR FROM ATLANTIS' CREW DURING ROLLOUT PLAY

VIDEO: ATLANTIS ARRIVES ATOP LAUNCH PAD PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: CROWDS WITNESS FINAL SHUTTLE ROLLOUT PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: ROLLOUT FROM VEHICLE ASSEMBLY BUILDING PLAY | HI-DEF



VIDEO: HOISTING ATLANTIS TO TANK AND SRBS PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: ORBITER GOES VERTICAL PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: SLING CAPTURES ATLANTIS PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: ATLANTIS LEAVES PROCESSING HANGAR PLAY | HI-DEF

VIDEO: ORBITER TRANSPORTER PICKS UP ATLANTIS PLAY | HI-DEF



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