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Discovery heads for space station
After a fiery ascent that turned night into day, space shuttle Discovery and its crew headed to the international space station yesterday to rewire the orbital outpost.
- AP
- Published: 00:00 December 11, 2006
Cape Canaveral: After a fiery ascent that turned night into day, space shuttle Discovery and its crew headed to the international space station yesterday to rewire the orbital outpost.
Astronauts were to spend yesterday in orbit inspecting the shuttle for potentially critical heat shield damage.
Discovery will dock with the space station today, and the intricate work will begin. Three complicated spacewalks are planned to rewire the space station from a temporary to a permanent power source.
Nasa had to beat the odds to get off the launch pad on Saturday in the first nighttime launch in four years. After only a 30 per cent chance of good weather earlier in the day and a two-hour delay in fuelling, Discovery streaked through a moonless sky at 8:47 pm.
Upbeat
"It just all came together perfectly," launch director Mike Leinbach said. The mood was also upbeat aboard Discovery, where five of seven astronauts were rookies.
"I think we have five people who just haven't stopped smiling yet," commander Mark Polansky said after the shuttle reached space.
During its 12-day mission, Discovery's crew will also deliver a $11 million addition to the space lab and bring home one of the space station's three crew members, German astronaut Thomas Reiter of the European Space Agency. American astronaut Sunita Williams will replace him, staying for six months.
The two veterans aboard the shuttle are Polansky and Robert Curbeam, who will spacewalk three times.
The rest of the crew are pilot William Oefelein and mission specialists Joan Higginbotham, Nicholas Patrick, Williams and European Space Agency's Christer Fuglesang, who was the first Swede in space.
New home in stars
Carrying among other things a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a statue of Ganesh and a packet of samosas, Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams soared into space on board space shuttle Discovery toward the International Space Station that would be her new home in the stars for the next six months.
Half Indian half American, commander Sunita Williams is a graduate of the US Naval Academy.
She is one of only six women Nasa has put in space since 1965. Her father is an Indian-born doctor and her mother a homemaker of Yugoslav descent.
- IANS
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