endeavors astronauts wrap up their
experiments pack up their ship and head
into the home stretch of their journey a
look back at the mission and a look
ahead to landing in the pre-dawn hours
tomorrow we've got the details of the
final hours of the first shuttle flight
of the year next on the flight day 9
edition of mission update
welcome to mission update
now less than 17 hours away from a
scheduled nighttime landing at the
kennedy space center the astronauts
aboard endeavour are set for sleep after
a day of deactivating secondary
experiments packing up their equipment
and testing the orbiter's flight systems
late last night the six astronauts
gathered to respond to reporters
questions both in english and japanese
about the achievements of their mission
those include the successful retrieval
of the japanese space flier unit
satellite the deployment and retrieval
of the oastflyer satellite and two
spacewalks which contributed more than a
day's worth of experience in working in
a weightless environment and testing
construction tools and techniques being
planned for the international space
station
right now endeavour is flying some 190
miles over the pacific ocean near the
hawaiian islands on the 131st orbit of
the mission traveling at 17
500 miles an hour or five miles a second
it circles the earth once every 90
minutes
having completed packing up all the
equipment in the crew cabin all six
astronauts are in their pre-sleep period
now in fact they are scheduled to go to
sleep for the last time this mission at
9 11.
since getting up yesterday afternoon the
astronauts focused on ensuring that
everything with their ship is set to
come home tomorrow morning they also
took time out a little time out to share
their thoughts about the mission with
reporters on the ground
with their mission nearing an end
endeavors astronauts began what is
expected to be their final full day in
space last night with a wake-up call
from the dark side
the theme from the motion picture star
wars sent the astronauts off and running
to prepare for saturday's scheduled
landing commander brian duffy and pilot
brent jett took their seats on the
flight deck to conduct routine tests of
endeavor's flight control systems they
then fired endeavour's 44 steering jets
two of which failed but flight
controllers said backup jets would be
used during entry with no impact to the
ship's landing as the astronauts began
to pack up their ship flight controllers
told duffy that weather conditions at
the cape were looking good for
tomorrow's homecoming
what we've got is we've got some great
weather for you both saturday and sunday
at both landing sites
we will be bringing up ksc only on
saturday
with two opportunities there
midway through their day the astronauts
began to shut down some of endeavour's
secondary experiments including the
shuttle laser altimeter payload in the
cargo bay the experiment has been
collecting data on topographical
features on earth and measuring the
distance between the shuttle and those
land masses
before stowing endeavour's ku band
antenna the crew gathered on the flight
deck to answer questions about their
mission from u.s and japanese reporters
astronauts leroy chao and winston scott
discussed the spacewalks conducted
earlier this week improvements made to
their spacesuits and the effect the
spacewalks will have on the assembly of
the international space station but
overall i felt very good in the suit i
could have continued to work in the suit
regardless of the uh temperatures so i
would say with we certainly have a good
baseline for which we can
uh going and do our work obviously you
always want to look for improvements but
i think we're to the point where we can
take that suit airborne and begin to
construct the station with it it was a
very successful flight test we learned a
lot it's going to feed right back into
the space station and the space station
program and we're ready to go build it
endeavour's landing will be the eighth
in darkness in shuttle history but duffy
said not to worry i'm looking forward to
the night landing it's something that
we've trained for
brent and i have been training now for
the you know the better part of a year
to do that
uh we've flown hundreds of approaches at
night
um i don't think that it'll be all that
different from uh from a day landing to
tell you the truth that some people that
have made knight landings before tell me
that it's actually a little bit easier
just because you don't have all the
other things in your visual
current range
uh to distract you at all and all you
have is the lit runway and the center
line and the light sliding up the
touchdown zone so very excited about
doing it i've been training for it for a
long time
and i don't think it's going to be
particularly difficult
to learn about the latest preparations
for the conclusion of mission sts 72 we
talked to mission operations director
lee briscoe in mission control earlier
today i asked him if everything was
proceeding on schedule for a landing
tomorrow morning
everything really is on schedule for
landing tomorrow morning the flight's
gone very well we're all looking forward
to landing at ksc tomorrow
what about the weather lee are there any
concerns about conditions at ksc or at
edwards for a possible landing there
the weather's looking pretty good there
are two frontal systems one on each
coast that we're watching
the one on the east coast at ksc should
clear and that should give us just
scattered clouds and wind right down the
runway so that looks good at edwards the
other front's out there and there may be
a bit of a crosswind problem so we'll
have to watch that but it generally
looks really good for tomorrow
if for some reason you should have to
wave off tomorrow morning what are the
next options and how long could
endeavour stay up
well we have a number of options again
we'll have a number of opportunities to
ksc and edwards on sunday morning uh and
then we'll have a number of
opportunities after that
we actually have consumables on board to
allow us to go uh
four or five days out instead of the
normal two days but we'll be talking
that over with the mission management
team this morning and coming up with our
plan on what we want to do
that's sts-72 mission operations
director lee briscoe
now here's a look ahead at the final
hours of this flight of endeavor and our
coverage plans here on nasa tv
at 10 central time we'll bring you
today's mission status briefing from
here at the johnson space center and at
11 30 we'll follow with the flight day
video file the highlights of the past
day aboard endeavour
the crew will be awakened at 5 11 this
afternoon and begin final preparations
for landing
at 8 11 this evening mission specialist
dan barry deactivates the shuttle solar
backscatter ultraviolet experiment
concluding its eighth and final shuttle
flight while commander brian duffy takes
a final turn at the portable in-flight
landing operations trainer to sharpen
his flying skills
all the astronauts will be involved in
deorbit preparations by 9 20 this
evening just after 10 o'clock duffy and
jeff will be closing the payload bay
doors about 11 15 the astronauts begin
getting into their launch and entry
suits for the trip home
assuming the weather in florida remains
good entry flight director jeff bantel
will give a go for the deorbit burn at
12 21 tomorrow morning 20 minutes later
duffy will fire endeavour's breaking
rockets to slow the shuttle by 270 feet
per second and allow it to fall out of
orbit
about 25 minutes later the orbiter will
start to feel the effects of contact
with the atmosphere as it descends to an
altitude of four hundred thousand feet
on its descent endeavor will cross the
north american coast over baja
california travel across northern mexico
and the breadth of texas turns southeast
as it crosses louisiana and extreme
southern mississippi then turn east over
the gulf of mexico and florida as it
makes its final approach to runway 33 at
the shuttle landing facility at the
kennedy space center touching down at 1
42 central time tomorrow morning the
eighth nighttime landing in shuttle
history
if it becomes necessary to wave off that
first opportunity another is available
on the following orbit which would put
endeavor on the ground in florida at 3
17 tomorrow morning
the nine-day mission of endeavor has
been coordinated out of the mission
control room here in houston where rob
kelso and his orbit 2 team of
controllers are in what is probably
their final shift of this mission john
shannon's planning team comes in late
this morning a final note next week the
space shuttle columbia will be moved to
the vehicle assembly building at ksc to
prepare it for a planned february 22nd
launch on a two-week science mission
which includes the reflight of the
italian tethered satellite system a firm
launch date will be set after mission
managers hold a flight readiness review
scheduled for february 9th
a reminder today's mission status
briefing is at 10 central time and the
flight day video file will follow at 11
30. we'll return in about five weeks
with the start of sts 75 on its two-week
journey on our next edition of mission
update
you