Dec 9 2006
From The Space Library
Space Shuttle Discovery launched at 8:47 p.m. (EST) from NASA’s KSC on Mission STS-116. NASA anticipated that STS-116 would be one of the most complex missions ever made to the ISS. The crew of ISS and Discovery planned to reconfigure the station’s electrical and cooling systems, making the solar arrays that the previous mission (STS-115) had delivered fully operational. In this unprecedented operation, the ISS’s ground control would shut down and reroute the ISS’s power in an iterative process. In addition, crew members would install the P5 truss (port side 5 truss) on the ISS’s Integrated Truss Structure, a lattice-like structure on the station’s exterior, which provided power, data, and other utilities for the station. Discovery’s seven-member crew included Commander Mark L. Polansky, Pilot William A. Oefelein, Flight Engineer Sunita L. Williams, and Mission Specialists Robert L. Curbeam Jr., Joan E. Higginbotham, Nicholas J. M. Patrick, and ESA’s Christer Fuglesang. Williams would remain at the ISS as part of Expedition 14, replacing ESA astronaut Thomas A. Reiter, who would return to Earth with the Discovery crew.
NASA, “STS-116 Delivers Permanent Power,” http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts116/launch/sts116_summary.html (accessed 7 June 2010).
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