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**Over 2100mb of STS-116 onwards related presentions and mission documentation <\/em>available on L2<\/em> ** Daily MMT\/MER STS-116 Presentations and same day ISS On Orbit Status reports on L2 helped collate this article.<\/em><\/p>\n **LIVE news updates on Discovery STS-116 \u2013 FOR EACH FLIGHT DAY**<\/em> \u2013 100s of live updates each flight day, including images and videos, all interactive.<\/p>\n Flight Day Seven was mainly an off duty day for the crew of Discovery, intermixed with media interviews \u2013 dominated by interest from the Swedish media in the continuing mission of their compatriot Christer Fuglesang. \u2018CGBA comprises two educational experiments to be utilized by middle school students,\u2019 noted today\u2019s On Orbit status report. \u2018One experiment will examine seed germination in micro-G including gravitropism (plant growth towards gravity) and phototropism (plant growth towards light). The second experiment investigates how micro-G affects the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, a small nematode worm.] <\/font><\/p>\n Interest in the day\u2019s events built up as troubleshooting on the retraction efforts with the P6 solar array opened with a \u2018Wiggle Test\u2019 \u2013 which involved 10 degrees of movement of the Beta gimble system on the truss. High speed video showed that the arrays did sway \u2013 but failed to help the guide wires spring into a desirable placement. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2018We\u2019re still working with our array, trying to get it retracted,\u2019 noted Deputy ISS program manager Kirk Shireman. \u2018We wanted to do some motion on the arrays with the Wiggle. <\/p>\n \u2018We tried the single Wiggle. We tried the double Wiggle. We changed the timing on those Wiggles. All these ideas were designed to set up some motion in the arrays. <\/font><\/p>\n \u2018After we tried those activities, we went to deploy the array slightly, by one bay before attempting to retract. However, the guide wires hung up on the grommets, bunching some of the array panels together.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018We didn\u2019t make much progress in terms of retracting the bay, but we did learn a lot,\u2019 added Derbyshire. \u2018So in my opinion it was worthwhile.\u2019<\/p>\n EVA 3, which will involve Williams and Robert \u2018Beamer\u2019 Curbeam, will complete the second half of work started by the re-wiring of the station\u2019s power configuration on EVA 2. NASA also evaluated the possibility of using some get ahead tasks in EVA 3 to take a closer look at the P6 array via the spacewalkers.<\/p>\n While another attempt via IVA activities will take place on Sunday, the possibility is open for a fourth EVA to manually free the array for retraction. More news on this will follow at the weekend.<\/p>\n Looking ahead to Saturday\u2019s EVA 3, ISS controllers and crew are preparing for the Channel 1\/4 power-downs, which include reactivating the PDIM (Power\/Data Interface Module) of the MedOps defibrillator equipment, aided by Thomas Reiter\u2019s reconfiguration of the OpsLAN (Operations Local Area Network) by returning the SSC (Station Support Computer) laptops 4,5,7,8 and FS (File Server) to their original power sources, <\/font><\/p>\n NASA educational resources (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n This will be preceded by temporary shutoff of the A\/L\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s PCS (Portable Computer System) A31p laptop, and swapping the Lab CCAA (Common Cabin Air Assembly) air conditioner, from the port to the starboard unit, as a get-ahead for Saturday\u2019s power systems (EPS) Channel 1\/4 reconfiguring.<\/p>\n Mentions on both the On Orbit status report and NASA memos acquired by this site note the recent Solar Activity led to Discovery taking over attitude control of the ISS early Friday morning, via her small reaction control jets located at the rear of the vehicle.<\/font><\/p>\n \u2018Due to the solar events, the Earth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s atmospheric density at orbit altitude was 2.5 times greater than nominal,\u2019 noted the On Orbit report. \u2018This caused high momentum on ISS while being controlled by the U.S. Momentum Manager, with CMGs approaching saturation. The decision was made to hand control over to Orbiter VRCS (Vernier Reaction Control System) for the crew sleep period.\u2019<\/p>\n It is not clear as to how long Discovery was in control of the attitude control, but NASA memos warned that Discovery may have to sacrifice the \u2018flyaround\u2019 of the ISS after undocking.<\/p>\n \u2018Holding attitude takes prop margin away from the Re-Rendezvous plan. After holding attitude for 17 hours, we will lose Re-Rendezvous\u2019 noted the NASA memo. \u2018Deleting the Fly Around will buy back 19 hrs of margin. Calculations will continue to be refined over time.\u2019<\/p>\n Once those calculations are made known, a further report will follow on the relevance of any further attitude control requirements and a fourth EVA to the last few mission days for STS-116.<\/font> **INFINITY: 10 minute STS MUSIC VIDEO**<\/font><\/em> \u2013 **NASASpaceflight.com Job Opportunities**<\/em><\/font> <\/p>\n <\/font> NASA have approved a fourth spacewalk, should it be required, to aid the retraction of the solar arrays on the P6 truss, after efforts to \u2018wiggle\u2019 the tension out of the guide wires failed Friday. A couple of IVA activities attempted to reduce the tension in the wires that run through the grommets, in order […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41851"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/font><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/75.126.85.10\/xmas.gif\")
As part of continuing cargo transfers \u2013 which was the other main element of FD7 \u2013 Suni Williams utilized time reserved for the transfer of the CGBA (Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus) payload from Discovery to the ISS.<\/p>\nThis proved to be a problem as the one bay retraction that followed saw the bunch of panels slip over the \u2018goalposts\u2019 they are supposed to fold back into. NASA then decided to deploy by a quarter of a bay to ensure the tension in the guide wires was acceptable to leave the array in a stable configuration. <\/font><\/p>\n
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**LIVE news updates on Discovery STS-116 \u2013 FOR EACH FLIGHT DAY**<\/font><\/em>
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<\/em>(Video section is FREE, but you need to sign up as a member of the forum to enter the video section of the site. We only use your e-mail to send you your password. It will not be used for spam etc.)<\/em><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<\/font><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"