[sarex] STS-115 MCC Status Report #12

[Arthur Rowe]

SUBMITTED BY ARTHUR N1ORC - AMSAT A/C #31468

Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

	09.15.06
STATUS REPORT: STS-115-12

STS-115 MCC Status Report #12

The Atlantis and International Space Station crews today will focus on 
the third and final spacewalk of the mission.

The STS-115 crew, Commander Brent Jett, Pilot Chris Ferguson and Mission 
Specialists Dan Burbank, Joe Tanner, Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper and Steve 
MacLean, is in its fourth day of joint operations with the station crew. 
Their Expedition 13 counterparts, Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight 
Engineers Jeff Williams and Thomas Reiter, will support the spacewalk 
activities as well as continued space station operations and maintenance.

Both crews awoke at 11:15 p.m. CDT to "Hotel California" performed by 
the Eagles and played for Tanner.

Tanner and Stefanyshyn-Piper will team up again for the spacewalk. While 
they were in the Quest airlock preparing for the spacewalk, a 
circuit-breaker-like remote power controller (RPC) tripped, causing loss 
of power to the airlock's depressurization pump. While flight 
controllers and engineers assessed the cause of the problem, the 
spacewalkers moved to the adjacent Unity module, while continuing to 
breathe oxygen through masks per their pre-spacewalk protocol.

The trip of the RPC was apparently due to a momentary spike in the 
electrical current of the depressurization pump. After assessing data to 
ensure the system had no short circuit, the breaker was reset and pump 
reactivated. Tanner and Stefanyshyn-Piper are scheduled to leave the 
Quest airlock at about 4:15 a.m. Once the spacewalk begins, the two will 
split up to perform the scheduled tasks for the spacewalk.

Tanner will install bolt retainers on the P6 Beta Gimbal Assembly, which 
helps to orient the pitch of the solar array wings. He’ll also use a new 
technique to attempt to re-engage a four-bar hinge lock that did not 
properly engage during STS-97.

Meanwhile, Stefanyshyn-Piper will retrieve the Materials on the 
International Space Station Experiment 5. The materials science 
experiment tests the effects of the space environment on prospective 
spacecraft materials.

The two will then prepare the photovoltaic radiator for deployment by 
removing launch hardware that was in place to protect it during the 
shuttle launch. Once that is done, other crewmembers can deploy that 
heat-dissipating radiator. Next the spacewalkers will replace an S-band 
antenna support assembly (SASA) on the Starboard 1 (S1) truss. They’ll 
also install a shroud on the failed SASA, which will be returned to 
Earth on a later mission.

Dividing again, Stefanyshyn-Piper will replace a baseband signal 
processor and transponder on S1 and Tanner will install a heat shield 
onto an antenna group interface tube to help overheating in this area 
during certain vehicle attitudes.

They’ll wrap up the spacewalk with two new tasks, installing a new 
external wireless television antenna and performing a Detailed Test 
Objective to assess infrared video of the wing leading edge. The 
spacewalk is scheduled to last 6.5 hours.

Once the spacewalk is completed, the mobile transporter, a movable 
platform that moves along the truss segments, will be relocated to a 
position on the newly arrived P3 truss to check out that worksite.

The next STS-115 mission status report will be issued Friday afternoon, 
or earlier if events warrant.