SUBMITTED BY ARTHUR N1ORC - AMSAT A/C #31468 115 FEET BEHIND THE ISS
The arrival of Space Shuttle Discovery this afternoon will set the stage for a change aboard the International Space Station. Discovery, which is scheduled to arrive at 5:05 p.m. EST, is delivering a new crew member to the station.
STS-116 Commander Mark Polansky guided Discovery through a back-flip maneuver about 4:05 p.m. to allow the station's Expedition 14 crew to take pictures of Discovery's heat shield. The images will be down linked to the ground for analysis by shuttle engineers.
NASA Astronaut Sunita Williams will join the Expedition 14 crew about an hour after she and the STS-116 crew enter the station for the first time about 7:02 p.m. She will replace European Space Agency Astronaut Thomas Reiter, who will return to Earth with the STS-116 crew. The crew rotation will be official when the custom-made seat liners are swapped out in the Soyuz spacecraft docked to the station.
STS-116 is also delivering the P5 integrated truss structure to the station. The P5 will be attached to the end of the P4 to set the stage for the addition of the P6. Three spacewalks are scheduled during STS-116’s stay to install the P5 and to reconfigure and redistribute power generated by the station’s solar arrays.
The Expedition 14 and STS-116 crews will conduct a week of joint operations. In addition to the spacewalks, they will transfer cargo between the vehicles. Discovery and its crew are scheduled to stay at the station until Dec. 18.
For the latest news and information on STS-116, visit the main shuttle page. + Read more http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html
+ Read more about Expedition 14 http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition14/index.html + View crew's daily timelines http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/timelines/index.html