 |  | Space Shuttle Discovery lifts off from launch pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday in Cape Canaveral. -- PHOTO: AFP |
CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida) - THE astronauts aboard the linked shuttle and station moved a giant chest of drawers from one spacecraft to the other on Monday, and hitched it to the orbiting outpost.
The Italian-built chest - nicknamed Leonardo, as in Leonardo da Vinci - is filled with nearly 8 tonnes of equipment and science experiments for the space station and its six residents, including a treadmill named after Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert. Much of the gear is stored in portable racks.
Leonardo, which was hoisted on the end of a hefty robot arm, will remain secured to the space station for the next week. The astronauts will remove the cylindrical vessel - 6.4m long and 4.57m in diameter - and place it back on space shuttle Discovery for return to Earth. By that time, it will be loaded with trash and unneeded items.
Nasa's brand new US$5 million (S$7.21 million) treadmill - officially called the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, or COLBERT for short - is in pieces and will need to be assembled after Discovery leaves.
Shuttle astronaut Jose Hernandez will oversee Leonardo's unloading operation. He is filing regular Twitter updates from orbit, the first astronaut to do so in two languages, English and Spanish.
Besides his bilingual tweets, Mr Hernandez is taking part in several Spanish-language interviews during the mission. Next up for the 13 space travellers - seven on the shuttle and six on the station - is the first spacewalk of their joint mission.
The space station's newest inhabitant, Nicole Stott, will venture out on Tuesday evening with Danny Olivas to remove a depleted ammonia tank. A fresh tank will be installed as part of the space station cooling system during spacewalk No. 2 on Thursday night. In all, three spacewalks are planned.
Ms Stott carried over six mice in an enclosed container on Monday evening. The mice are part of a bone loss study and will return to Earth with her in November, aboard shuttle Atlantis.
Meanwhile, the chairman of Nasa's mission management team, LeRoy Cain, delivered some good news Monday: Discovery's thermal shielding looks to be in good shape and should soon be cleared for re-entry, currently scheduled for Sept 10.
Flight controllers, meanwhile, are looking at fuel-efficient ways to move the shuttle-station complex over the coming week. Discovery's tiny steering jets are unusable because of a leak. -- APSource
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