Endeavour Readies for Tomorrow's Undocking
By Alice Turner
21:36, March 23rd 2008
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Endeavour Readies for Tomorrow's Undocking

The Endeavour crew prepares to depart the International Space Station on Monday. They are scheduled to land back home on Wednesday evening. Today, they were awakened at 12:28 p.m. by a recording of "I am Free" beamed up from Mission Control, a song recorded by members of astronaut Mike Foreman's church near the Johnson Space Center.

For today minor tasks are scheduled, such as transfer of items and samples which need to get back on Earth to the shuttle. The schedule allows for more rest time which is needed to prepare for the stressful descent.

"The final thing that's kind of on the open to-do list is the very important crew photo. That's where both the station and shuttle crew will get together and take sort of a goodbye photo, a team photo, of everyone together," said space station Flight Director Bob Dempsey to CBS News.

Mission Specialists Robert L. Behnken and Mike Foreman began the fifth spacewalk of STS-123 at 4:34 p.m. EDT on Saturday. Rick Linnehan, also a mission specialist, coordinated their activities from inside the orbiting complex. They completed the fifth spacewalk of STS-123 at 10:36 p.m. EDT Saturday.

During the spacewalk, robot arm operators grappled the Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS) and the two spacewalkers assembled an umbilical designed to keep the boom safe during its time in the harsh space environment. Then the robot arm handed the OBSS off to Behnken and Foreman, who stowed it on the station’s S1 Truss. The OBSS is usually carried by space shuttles, but Discovery, which will blast off in May, will carry a second piece of the Japanese Kibo lab that is too large to allow for room to stow the boom inside the shuttle.

The preceding spacewalk, the fourth, was performed by Michael Foreman and Robert Behnken. They performed a six-and-a-half hour spacewalk during which they tested a special foam dispenser and the technique to repair holes in the space shuttle's vital heat shield.

The two also fixed a broken circuit breaker but failed to remove a power connector from the truss. It was vital to complete this tile repair test before space shuttle Atlantis flies to the Hubble Space Telescope in August. Unlike missions to the space station, Atlantis’ crew members wouldn’t be able to wait on the station for another shuttle to bring them home if Atlantis was damaged.

Meanwhile, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency destroyed a list of names of the 132 people who suggested the name Kibo for their nation's first space laboratory following the enforcement of the Personal Information Protection Law in April 2005, Daily Yomiuri Online reported.



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