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Astronauts pack for return to Earth

Astronauts Wendy Lawrence, left, and Charles Camarda, right, stow equipment as astronaut Steve Robinson, center, floats in this view from television from the space shuttle Discovery's middeck Friday. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Todd Halvorson Florida Today
Astronauts Wendy Lawrence, left, and Charles Camarda, right, stow equipment as astronaut Steve Robinson, center, floats in this view from television from the space shuttle Discovery's middeck Friday. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

HOUSTON – Discovery’s astronauts packed up their spaceship and took out the trash at the International Space Station Friday, preparing for a planned return to Earth early next week.

Working with the station’s 58-foot robot arm, shuttle pilot James Kelly and mission specialist Wendy Lawrence plucked a cylindrical shipping container from an outpost berthing port and stowed it back in Discovery’s cargo bay.

The two astronauts then took a high-flying handoff from shuttle robot arm operators Andy Thomas and Charles Camarda, snatching a sensor-tipped extension boom the Discovery crew had used to inspect the ship’s fragile heat shield.

Fifty feet long, the Canadian-built boom was gently eased into latches on the starboard sill of the shuttle’s cargo bay for the return trip home.

Tight clearances made the mooring especially tricky, and the astronauts played the mighty “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s musical masterpiece “Messiah” once the work was done.

“We were wondering, was that you and Wendy singing, or was that a prerecorded thing?” astronaut Mike Massimino asked Kelly from NASA’s Mission Control Center here at Johnson Space Center.

As it turned out, Discovery commander Eileen Collins had brought a recording to play after what was one of the crew’s last major chores at the station.

“We really enjoyed that. Thank you,” Massimino said.

Launched from Kennedy Space Center on July 26, Discovery sailed to the station with an Italian-built moving van filled with more than 3,800 pounds of food, water, clothing, research apparatus and other supplies.

The 22-foot-long shipping container was anchored to a station berthing port last week so that the shuttle astronauts could haul the supplies into the outpost.

The cargo carrier then was filled up with 5,000 pounds of trash and excess equipment that had been cluttering the station since the last shuttle visit in December 2002, two months before the February 2003 Columbia accident grounded NASA’s three remaining orbiters.

Another 1,400 pounds of gear was hustled into the station from lockers in the shuttle’s crew cabin. And the astronauts stuffed some 1,300 pounds of trash and equipment into those storage cabinets for the trip back to Earth.

The shuttle robot arm extension enabled the astronauts to conduct an unprecedented inspection of Discovery’s composite carbon wing panels and its nose cap, two key components of the ship’s vulnerable heat shield.

The Discovery crew is due to depart the station early today. The astronauts will test landing systems on their craft during the day. Touchdown at Kennedy Space Center remains scheduled for 1:46 a.m. PDT Monday.