Discovery docks with ISS
2010-04-07 11:31
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NASA
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Cape Canaveral - The US space shuttle Discovery performed a back flip in space on Wednesday, easing into position for a rendezvous with the International Space Station on a mission that has put more women in orbit than ever before.
The fluid, eight minute manoeuvre was captured by video cameras on board the space station as the shuttle sailed over Indonesia and Australia at an altitude of more than 300km, Nasa said.
Mission commander Alan Poindexter then lined the shuttle up to a docking node on the space station, the destination of a 13 day mission to resupply the orbiting international outpost.
"Discovery, Houston, on the big loop, you are 'go' for docking," said Nasa Flight Director Richard Jones.
The mission - one of the last before the US shuttle fleet is retired at the end of this year after 30 years of service - is notable in that for the first time four women are in orbit, more at one time than ever before.
Crew
Discovery's seven member crew includes three female mission specialists while a fourth, American astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson, is on the space station, arriving there on Sunday on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
The women astronauts joining Dyson are mission specialists Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, 34, a former high school science teacher; Stephanie Wilson, 43, a veteran of two shuttle missions; and Yamazaki, 39, an astronaut with the Japanese space agency since 1996.
Rounding out the Discovery crew are mission commander Poindexter, 48; co-pilot Jim Dutton, 41; mission specialist and spacewalker Rick Mastracchio, 50; and fellow spacewalker Clay Anderson, 51.
The mission also puts two Japanese astronauts in space simultaneously for the first time, with mission specialist Naoko Yamazaki joining Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, who arrived at the station in December.
Discovery blasted off on Monday from Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida in a launch marred only by the failure of an antenna used to transmit television pictures back to Earth that also is part of its radar docking system.
Nasa officials said the shuttle could safely dock without the antenna.
During the mission, Discovery will deliver nearly eight tonnes of cargo, including spare bunks for the occupants of the space station, a large tank of ammonia coolant and seven racks filled with science experiments.
Exercise
Among the gear being hauled into space is a freezer to preserve samples of blood, urine, saliva, plants or microbes used in micro-gravity experiments for later analysis back on Earth.
Discovery is also carrying an exercise machine designed to study the effects of weightlessness on the body's musculoskeletal system. Muscles can atrophy during long sojourns in space so astronauts have to exercise regularly.
Two astronauts will conduct three space walks lasting six-and-a-half hours each on days five, seven and nine of the mission.
The ISS, a $100bn project begun in 1998 with the participation of 16 countries, is financed mainly by the US.
Once the shuttle programme ends, the US will depend on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ferry their astronauts to the station until a new US launch vehicle is ready to take over around 2015.