Scheduled to begin work at 8:16 a.m. EDT, the astronauts will remove Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and replace it with the new Wide Field Camera 3. They will also replace a failed science data processing computer that delayed the launch from last October and install a mechanism for a spacecraft to capture Hubble for de-orbit at the end of its life.
Meanwhile, the crew was informed that a focused inspection will not be required for any area of the shuttle. The official decision will be made during tomorrow's Mission Management Team meeting.
The crew also was notified that the imagery from scans of the underbelly and scans of the crew cabin did not sufficiently overlap, leaving a row of 16 heat shield tiles in an area of the port side of the shuttle's nose where there isn't sufficient imagery. The crew will be asked to use the arm's end effector camera to go over that area. The flight director has asked the flight activities officer to potentially insert the brief inspection into the crew's timeline on flight day 5. The survey would take 45 minutes, at most.
There was no further communication with the crew about a possible conjunction due to debris from the Chinese Fengyun-1C weather satellite. The 10 cm object was to make its closest approach to Atlantis at 7:28 p.m. EDT. It passed without incident.
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I suppose like me you are always glued to Nasa TV when a mission is underway.
ReplyDeleteEspecially now that the shuttle programs days are numbered.
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