STS 124 DISCOVERY FD/5 UPDATES

[Chipstone306]

Crews to Enter Japanese Lab Today

Image above: The International Space Station's robot arm moves the Japanese Pressurized Module from space shuttle Discovery's payload bay to its new home on the station. Photo credit: NASA TV

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The shuttle and station crews will open the newly installed Japanese laboratory Kibo for business today. Hatch opening is planned for 4:52 p.m. EDT. The experiment module was installed on the Harmony Node’s port side Tuesday.

After a leak check, mission specialists Karen Nyberg and Akihiko Hoshide will prepare Kibo for activation before opening the hatches. Shortly after entering Kibo with Hoshide, Expedition 17 Commander Sergei Volkov will sample the air and test for contamination. They will wear protective goggles and masks until they are sure the Japanese lab’s air is clean.

Mission Specialists Mike Fossum and Ron Garan will review procedures for their second spacewalk and sleep in the U.S. Quest airlock tonight to purge the nitrogen from their bodies. During Thursday’s spacewalk, the second of the mission, the spacewalkers will outfit the new lab and prepare the Japanese logistics module for relocation.

 

[Chipstone306]

International Space Station

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080603/ISS_lab_080604/20080604?hub=SciTech

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

I've been following the preparations before the Kibo module hatch opening on the background on NasaTV. All cable connections are now made, the main computer of Kibo is powered up and it appears that they are almost ready to open it on time as planned.
It's nice to see, because they have a complete live coverage of this including all radio communications.

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

Hatch is open, all crew now entered the module, there's a lot of room in this largest module of the ISS!

Someone just put another person right in the center of the module, until he floated completely motionless. Then when the other person let him go, he could do whatever he want, but was unable to reach/touch the walls, just out of his reach in this large (empty) module
I hope some high resolution videos of this will be available for download later.
​

 

[GregBurch]

Damn -- that thing is HUGE. Until it gets filled up with equipment, it's going to be THE place for zero-G acrobatics.

 

[tblaxland]

I saw the FD3 highlights the other day and the video from the crew handheld camera during their tour of the station showed just how big the ISS is getting now. And that was without Kibo. An awesome machine, to be sure.