Reiter, who traveled to the station in July aboard Discovery during STS-121, will return to Earth with the STS-116 crew.
VIDEO NARRATOR: Polansky -- along with William Oefelein, Robert Curbeam, Joan Higginbotham,
Nicholas Patrick, Christer Fuglesang and Sunita Williams -- will have a busy work schedule for the 12-day mission.
MARK POLANSKY: I really need to know the big picture, what's going on with the entire crew,
be looking out for the rest of my crew with regards to their timelines, their tasks, making sure that people aren't
getting over-utilized in certain areas, as well as concentrating on the things that, in particular,
I'll be performing on the flight. So it's sort of like being both a player and a coach at the same time.
VIDEO NARRATOR: One of the prime tasks of the mission will be to install the Port 5 truss segment on the station.
The shuttle's robotic arm will hand off the truss to the station's robotic arm,
which will be used to carefully position the segment for attachment by two spacewalkers.
Sunita Williams and Joan Higginbotham will operate the station's arm.
JOAN HIGGINBOTHAM: The arm operations are really complex. We have very tight tolerances between the,
the arm and different structures. For example, on our mission, we are going to, as we're putting the
P5 truss into position, we are coming within inches of a box. And, and that's unheard of.
You always want to stay two feet away from structure. So, two feet and two inches is a, is a big difference!
VIDEO NARRATOR: Since it went into service, the space station has been running on a temporary electrical configuration.
Once the truss is in place, the astronauts will tackle the difficult task of
reconfiguring the station to run on power generated by its new solar arrays.
These arrays were attached and deployed by the STS-115 crew in September
and are designed to rotate to remain pointed optimally at the sun.
During two additional spacewalks, mission controllers on the ground will send
commands to switch off power, then unplug and replug power cables into different locations.
What sounds simple on Earth is certainly more difficult -- and dangerous -- when working in space.
The work is full of unknown factors, like working with parts of the station that
have been exposed to the harsh conditions of space for a number of years.
One such process will require folding up a solar array currently in use to allow the new ones to fully rotate.
European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang, the first Swedish astronaut in space,
will participate in two of the mission's spacewalks.
A final goal of the mission is a crew exchange as Williams trades places with
German astronaut Thomas Reiter to become the new flight engineer of the space station's Expedition 14 crew.