after a week of hunting down satellites
and walking in space endeavour's
astronauts get a day to relax heading
down the home stretch the crew turns to
preparations for bringing its ship into
port we've got the story of flight day
eight aboard endeavour next on today's
edition of mission update
welcome to mission update the astronauts
of endeavor are near the end of their
seventh full workday and have begun to
get their spacecraft ready to end its
tenth trip to earth orbit after four
scheduled hours of off-duty time and
with the primary objectives of the
mission completed the six crew members
turned their attention to a number of
secondary experiments and packing up
some of their equipment for the trip
home saturday morning the orbiter
systems are reported to be operating in
fine fashion flight controllers have not
been able to determine the cause of an
ice buildup in the topper unit of the
flash evaporator system which assists
the payload bay door radiators in
dissipating heat generated by the
shuttle's systems but mission operations
representative jeff bantel says the fess
is working fine now
we are looking at
doing a longer fest dump in the test
that we tried yesterday
we've been using the fess off and on
during the day today in the primary beat
controller it's worked great haven't
been any problems
if our water quantity is allowed we'll
probably do a little bit longer kind of
a festive tomorrow
bantal says that will provide more data
on the fess operations to assist and to
assist the engineers who will be
checking the system after the orbiter
returns to earth right now endeavour is
in the 115th orbit of the mission flying
some 190 miles over the pacific ocean at
a speed of 17 500 miles an hour the
shuttle orbits the earth every 90
minutes
on board endeavor all six astronauts are
nearing the end of their pre-sleep
period and they're scheduled to turn in
for the night in just a couple of
minutes
after almost a week's worth of satellite
retrieval and walking in space the
astronauts took it easy today seeing two
secondary payloads and taking some time
off to relax and enjoy themselves
an up tempo start to endeavor's eighth
day in space last night as mission
control roused the astronauts for what
would be a quiet day in orbit with all
their mission objectives having been
successfully completed the astronauts
were given the day to relax enjoy the
view of the planet and capture images of
the earth from their vantage point 192
miles in space
as endeavour passed over the gulf coast
of florida early this morning flight
controllers and pilot brent jett
discussed weather conditions back on
earth in particular a massive weather
system heading toward the southeast and
endeavors landing site
brent we have the weather
radar and the visible satellite picture
up on our screens right now and there is
a front coming by we're clear now but we
expect some
squall weather
towards morning here
glad you got a good look
yeah tom we just passed right overhead
and we could see that stuff out to the
north and west
we're just concerned that it goes
through florida by the time you guys are
ready to come home
the forecast for the kennedy space
center calls for good conditions for
endeavor scheduled landing early
saturday
three of endeavors crew members
commander brian duffy japanese astronaut
koichi wakata and mission specialist
winston scott gathered on the shuttle's
flight deck this morning to answer
questions about their mission from south
african students at a television studio
in johannesburg
scott who spent seven hours space
walking in endeavors cargo bay yesterday
said a vital test of his spacesuit's
ability to insulate him from bitterly
cold temperatures proved to be
successful
the most important part i think was the
35 minutes that i used to stand still in
the most cold environment that we could
uh achieve
and i activated the thermal uh the
heating units on my suit to see whether
or not they would keep me warm and i'm
happy to report that they they worked
very very well i
never once fell uncomfortable out there
in the coral of space
wakata who retrieved two satellites
during the mission including his
country's space flier unit said the
mission represented another success in
the arena of international cooperation
we saw the perfect teamwork during this
retrieval together with the crew members
here
and this is one of the very good
examples of the international
cooperation
and i think international cooperation is
the most important thing to proceed on
to further frontier in space
endeavor continued to circle the earth
every 90 minutes as the astronauts began
to gear up for the final hours of their
flight and an end to the first shuttle
mission of the year
now here's a look at what's coming up in
the next day on orbit and our schedule
for nasa television coverage
in just a few minutes the six astronauts
on board endeavor end their eighth day
on orbit and start an eight-hour sleep
period
at 10 central time we'll hold our daily
mission status briefing from here at the
johnson space center immediately
afterward we'll go to the goddard space
flight center for science briefings on
the shuttle laser altimeter and the
getaway specials the flight day video
file containing highlights of this day
on orbit comes up on nasa television at
11 30.
the astronauts start their final full
work day in space at 5 11 this afternoon
with preparations for saturday's
pre-dawn landing
about a quarter to nine tonight
commander brian duffy and pilot brent
jett start the pre-landing checkout of
endeavour's flight control systems about
an hour later they will hot fire the
reaction control system jets to ensure
controllability of the orbiter as it
re-enters the atmosphere
at 11 41 central time tonight the crew
holds its in-flight news conference the
first 20 minutes of tonight's event will
be for u.s reporters and the final 10
minutes will be in japanese for japanese
reporters
a bit after one o'clock tomorrow morning
duffy will take a turn at the portable
in-flight landing operations trainer a
computer flight simulator used by
commanders and pilots on orbit to hone
their flying skills
other crew members will be busy packing
up the crew cabin overnight and mission
specialist koichi wakata will stow the
ku band communications antenna at 3 11
tomorrow morning
all of the activity on board endeavor is
being guided from the mission control
center here in houston where flight
director rob kelso and his orbit 2 team
are on duty flight director john
shannon's planning shift comes on
console later this morning
a reminder immediately after our 10
o'clock mission status briefing nasa tv
will bring you special science briefings
on the shuttle laser altimeter and the
getaway specials and then our flight day
video file will air at 11 30. we'll be
back at 9 central time tomorrow morning
with the next edition of mission update
you