Bringing an early sunrise to the Space Coast, space shuttle Discovery blazed a trail into space early this morning to begin a thirteen day mission to outfit the International Space Station with new science equipment, supplies and perform maintenance on the 11 year-old orbital complex. Discovery's penultimate mission sets in motion the final push to complete assembly of the space station and retire the orbiter's by the end of the year.
br clear="all"> VIDEO FLIGHT DAY ONE HIGHLIGHTS WATCH | DOWNLOAD ORBIT 2 FLIGHT DIRECTOR KU ANTENNA UPDATE WATCH | DOWNLOAD ASCENT FLIGHT CONTROL TERAM REPLAY WATCH | DOWNLOAD POSTLAUNCH PRESS CONFERENCE WATCH | DOWNLOAD LAUNCH REPLAYS WATCH | DOWNLOAD OUR VIDEO OF LAUNCH FROM THE VAB ROOF WATCH | DOWNLOAD DISCOVERY LAUNCHES ON STS-131 WATCH | DOWNLOAD CREW DONS FLIGHT SUITS BEFORE LAUNCH WATCH | DOWNLOAD TRADITIONAL ASTRONAUT WALKOUT CEREMONY WATCH | DOWNLOAD ISS FLIES OVERHEAD AT KSC WATCH | DOWNLOAD RSS RETRACTION BEFORE LAUNCH WATCH | DOWNLOAD ALL-ACCESS MEMBERS ONLY VIDEO WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 1 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 2 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 3 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 4 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 5 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 6 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 7 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 8 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 9 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 10 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 11 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 12 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 13 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 14 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 15 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 16 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 17 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 18 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 19 DOWNLOAD WATCH COMPLETE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 1.2 MBPS VIDEO - PART 20 DOWNLOAD WATCH NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE, 500 KBPS VIDEO DOWNLOAD WATCH NASA TV FUELING COVERAGE, 500 KBPS VIDEO DOWNLOAD HI-DEFINITION VIDEO STS-131 LAUNCH 480p DOWNLOAD STS-131 LAUNCH 720p DOWNLOAD STS-131 LAUNCH 1080i DOWNLOAD EXTENDED STS-131 LAUNCH DOWNLOAD Despite a minor issue late in the countdown with the command message encoder verifier in the range safety system on the ground, Discovery lifted off on time at 6:21:25 a.m. EDT, bathing Kennedy Space Center with the brilliant light from the flame of its twin solid rocket booster and three liquid-fueled main engines. The shuttle quickly rose from the launch pad into cloudless early morning skies, the faint blue glow of early sunrise on the eastern horizon. Two minutes after launch, the solid rocket booster, having spent their fuel, were jettisoned, leaving Discovery to thrust its way to orbit on the power of the main engines alone. As the shuttle climbed through the upper atmosphere into full daylight, the light from the Sun illuminated the exhaust from the hydrogen and oxygen powered main engines, exhaust turned to steam and ice crystals, creating a spectacular visual effect with Discovery, a bright dot in the sky, being trailed by a wispy contrail billowing out behind it. "The crew of STS-131 is really honored to represent the thousands of dedicated people that make up the entire NASA, JAXA and contractor workforces," Commander Alan Poindexter said shortly before liftoff. Space station flight controllers in Houston beamed up live television of Discovery's launch to the six Expedition 23 crewmembers. Three of them, cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov, Mikhail Kornienko and NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson, arrived at the station just a day earlier aboard the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft and joined Expedition 23 commander Oleg Kotov, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi and Timothy Creamer already onboard. "We're absolutely delighted to have our friends and comrades joining us here in a couple of days," Creamer radioed from the station after watching Discovery's launch. Discovery's launch was precisely timed to lead to a link up with the International Space Station about 220 miles above the earth. Fifteen minutes before Discovery took to the skies, ISS passed directly overhead, looking like a brilliant star zipping through space. Appropriately, the space station passed directly in front of the nearly full Moon, making a perfect transit before passing over Kennedy Space Center. Discovery is scheduled to dock with the space station sometime around 3:44 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 7. A series of engine firings during the first two days of the mission will bring the shuttle to a point about 50,000 feet behind the station. Once there, Discovery will start its final approach. About 2.5 hours before docking, the shuttle's jets will be fired during what is called the terminal initiation burn. As Discovery moves closer to the station, its rendezvous radar system and trajectory control sensor will provide the crew with range and closing-rate data. Several small correction burns will place the shuttle about 1,000 feet below the station. Poindexter will stop Discovery about 600 feet below the station. Timing the next steps to occur with proper lighting, he will maneuver the shuttle through a nine-minute backflip called the Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver, also known as a the R-bar Pitch Maneuver since Discovery is in line with an imaginary vertical R-bar directly below the station. During this maneuver, station crew members Timothy (T.J.) Creamer and Oleg Kotov will photograph Discovery's upper and bottom surfaces through windows of the Zvezda Service Module. They will use digital cameras with an 800mm lens to provide up to one-inch resolution and one with a 400mm lens that provides three-inch resolution. Poindexter then will fly the shuttle through a quarter circle to a position about 400 feet directly in front of the station. From that point he will begin the final approach to docking to the Pressurized Mating Adapter 2 at the forward end of the Harmony node. Immediately after opening the hatches between the two spacecraft and getting settled into joint operations, the crew will remove the cargo-carrying Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) "Leonardo" from Discovery's payload bay and berth it temporarily to the space station so that the astronauts can climb inside and remove the science racks and supplies. The module is filled with supplies, new crew sleeping quarters and science racks that will be transferred to the station's laboratories. This is the final compliment of laboratory facilities that will complete the station's overall research capabilities. "STS-131, the ISS Mission 19A, to the space station is a resupply mission," said shuttle commander Alan Poindexter during preflight training. "We are carrying up a multipurpose logistics module in the cargo bay, and we will dock with the space station and attach that module with the robotic arm to the space station." "We'll resupply the space station with the almost 13,000 pounds of cargo and then bring back about five or six thousand pounds. We'll also perform three spacewalks to replace an ammonia tank assembly and some other tasks that need to be done on the outside of the space station. Then, we'll bring all that gear back home and land in Florida about two weeks later." Poindexter's fellow crew members are Pilot Jim Dutton and Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio, Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, Clay Anderson and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Naoko Yamazaki. Dutton, Lindenburger and Yamazaki are making their first spaceflights. These three astronauts are the last rookies that will fly aboard the shuttle before its planned retirement. Three spacewalk are on tap for the mission, focused on getting the ammonia tank assembly delivered by Discovery into place on the starboard side of the station's truss and getting the spent ammonia tank assembly into Discovery's cargo bay. Because of the location of the old starboard ammonia tank assembly, the space station's robotic arm cannot reach it from the same location that it must be in to remove the new ammonia tank assembly from the shuttle's cargo bay. That means unpacking the new assembly, storing it, a base change for the robotic arm, removing the old assembly, storing it, installing the new, another base change for the arm and then packing the old assembly into the cargo bay. And all that work will take three spacewalks to accomplish, with some space here and there for get-ahead work. Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio and Clayton Anderson will spend a total of 19.5 hours outside the station on flight days 5, 7 and 9. These will be the fourth, fifth and sixth spacewalks for both astronauts, and the second, third and fourth that they have performed together. Mastracchio performed three spacewalks during the STS-118 mission, and Anderson performed two during that mission and one during his stint as an Expedition 15 flight engineer. STS-131 also feature another of NASA's "Teacher-In-Space" inspired Educator Astronauts. Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger is the last of three teachers selected as mission specialists in the 2004 Educator-Astronaut class to fly on the shuttle. The educational activities on the STS-131 mission will focus on robotics and promoting careers in science, technology, engineering and math. "Well, I first started thinking about space when I was younger," Lindenburger said of her early interest in spaceflight. "I did a writing contest, at that time through Martin-Marietta, and I took second place. I got a NASA tee shirt, and first place was a trip to Space Camp. My parents knew that I really wanted to go so they sent me that year, the following year, which was ninth grade, to Space Camp. It was there that I realized if I keep working hard in math and science, it's a possibility that I could work at NASA." "When I was teaching astronomy at high school, one of my students said, 'How do you go to the bathroom in space?' It's kind of a common question we get when we're doing PRs, and I said, 'Well, I don't know exactly what the toilet looks like, but I'll look it up.' I looked it up that night, and at the same time they had posted that educators could become astronauts. So, I had the answer to my student's question, but I also got an answer to a dream that I had for a long time, and so I applied for the astronaut position." During the mission, Metcalf-Lindenburger and one of her crewmates, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Naoko Yamazaki, will conduct education payload operations to capture video on both the shuttle and the International Space Station for a NASA education film. The video will highlight robotic arm operations and NASA's diverse robotic missions; it also will explore the many career fields associated with robotics. On flight day 6, STS-131 Commander Alan G. Poindexter, Pilot James P. Dutton, Jr. and Metcalf-Lindenburger are scheduled to participate in an education downlink with K-12 educators and students gathered at the Naval Post Graduate School (NPGS) in Monterey, Calif. On flight day 10, Poindexter and Mission Specialists Stephanie Wilson, Clayton Anderson and Metcalf-Lindenburger are scheduled to participate in an education downlink with educators and students at Eastern Guildford High School in Gibsonville, N.C. The high school plans to involve K-12 students from the entire school district in STEM education activities before, during and after the mission. STS-131 is the 131st space shuttle mission and the 33rd flight to the space station. After Discovery lands on April 18, NASA will have just three more missions, one for each of Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour, before the fleet is retired into the history books - currently targeted for the end of September. (The Spacearium / SpaceflightNews.net)
RETURN TO THE SPACEARIUM HOMEPAGE |
| Copyright © 2008, Space Media Corporation and The Spacearium, All Rights Reserved. All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Space Media Corporation is a wholly owned company of the Aerospace Research & Engineering Systems Institute, Inc. |
