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MARK POLANSKY: We have several things going on, on STS-116.  Uh, we’re going to go ahead and

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take up a part of the truss structure, uh, called, uh, P5.  And, we call it a spacer; and, in essence, it goes at the end of P4, which is

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another truss structure which has a pair of solar arrays.  And, eventually there will be another piece, P6, which has been in orbit for a long time now but in

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a temporary location.  And, it eventually will go way out on the portside of the station.  And, P5 is the connecting piece between P4 and P6.  So, that’s an

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important piece that needs to get installed.  Uh, the other thing that we’re doing with it is:  Once we get up there, we’re going to reconfigure the electrical

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system. Right now we have again sort of a preliminary, temporary electrical system set up.  And, it does a great job providing power, but it’s not as

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robust as we need it to be in the future.  Once P5 is installed, we will be doing a lot of the rewiring of the space station to get the primary controls,

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primary electrical system working.  And so, that’s going to be a very critical thing for the station.

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WILLIAM OEFELEIN: We have several main objectives.  One is we’re going to rotate out a, uh, space station crew member, uh, Suni Williams,

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who’s a classmate of mine actually (we started here at NASA together); we’re going to take her up and replace Thomas Reiter, uh, the ESA astronaut

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who’s up there right now, uh, uh, replace him with, with Suni.  And so, we’ll take Suni up and bring Thomas down.  That’s one of the main objectives.

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Uh, one of the other big ticket items is:  We’re going to reconfigure the, uh, electrical system on the space station.  Right now it’s running on an alert

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– early electrical system, one that was just developed to, uh, kind of, uh, run just during the construction period.

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And, and once, uh, it gets to a certain size, you need to bring all these other switching units and, and batteries and, and so forth

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on line.  So, we’re going to activate the new electrical system, kind of the permanent electrical system,

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and deactivate the, uh, the earlier or preliminary electrical system.  And then, we have some other, uh, minor objectives, uh, as

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well with, uh, some, uh, well, I guess one other big one, I should say, is, is attaching P5.  We’re actually adding a,

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a part, part of the truss, and that’s actually will be one of the first things we do, uh.  P, the, the truss is called, uh,

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P for port, S for starboard, and there’s different segments, like P3, 4, P5, P6, and then S so forth.  And, we attach, uh, P5,

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which is a truss segment, to add the solar arrays so we can add the solar arrays, which is how the space station generates power, electrical power.

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It just allows us to get more and more out there so we can get more power into the space station to do more science.  Uh,

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so those are kind of the three big things.

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NICHOLAS PATRICK: Well, this is the next building brick in, uh, in the main truss that holds out the

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solar arrays and other power equipment, uh, as far away from the pressurized modules of space station as they need to be to gimbal and

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face the sun.  Uh, so in a sense, regardless of size, it’s as important as any other piece; it’s the next building block.

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Uh, and while it may be a bit shorter than some of the other truss segments, it’s every bit as wide.  And, we have to get it

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out of the payload, and it only just fits!  So, uh, I’m not sure I’d consider it small.  Certainly when I’m looking out through

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rear windows of the cockpit and moving it, uh, with the shuttle’s robot arm, it seems pretty big to me.

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ROBERT CURBEAM: The big thing is how the power is supplied or where it comes from really.  Uh, space station was designed around,

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uh, a truss, uh, what we call a main power truss, which spans space station and has solar array

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wings on the end of it. Right now one of those solar array wing sets is actually situated on top of space station in a temporary place.

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What we’re going to do is:  We’re basically going to unplug space station from that truss and plug it

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into this main truss, which goes span-wise across the station.  And then, several flights later, they’ll take that truss that is sitting

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on top of the station and put it in its permanent place outboard of the, uh, small spacer that we’re going to put

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in.  So, that whole port wing will have a, actually, that whole port truss will have four solar array wings,

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and all be providing power through that main truss to the U.S. Lab and the U.S. operating segment.  And eventually, through power conversion,

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to the Russian segment, too. CHRISTER FUGLESANG: Actually, an interesting thing with the P5, uh, is how it’s put in place.

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Most of the pieces, they’re just put in place with a robotic arm and then, you, you know, drive, uh, bolts from inside.  However,

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with, uh, P5, it will still be the arm which kind of put in place, but, uh, the bolts has to be driven kind of manually.

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And, in addition to that, uh, the P4 solar arrays, they cannot stick out beyond the end of the main frame of P4.  And, it’s

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really like almost threading a, a needle through a needle eye to get this P5 in place.  And, uh, normally the robotics people have good cameras, and they

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can do everything inside.  Well, in this case, there’s no good cameras out there, so it will be the EVA people—uh, in this case, Beamer and me—who can,

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you know, have to guide the, the robotic people that it really doesn’t hit anything.  And, it, uh, at some place the margin is only, I think it’s, the

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nominal would be seven centimeters, the minimum.  But, there’s a box that has electrical powers, you don’t want to hit that.  So, it will be an interesting,

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exercise. JOAN HIGGINBOTHAM: The, the missions are really complex now.  Uh, the arm operations are really complex.

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We have very tight tolerances between the, the arm and different structures.  For example, on our mission, we are going to,

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as we’re putting the P5 truss into position,

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we are coming within inches of a box.  And, and that’s unheard of.  You always want to stay two feet away from

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structure.  So, two feet and two inches is a, is a big difference!  The EVA, the spacewalks are really complicated.

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They have a lot of content in them.  And,

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it’s really crucial that we execute these missions as well as we can.  And, the big thing is that:  When we go on back to moon and,

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when we go back to the moon and on to Mars, I don’t think those operations are going to be any less

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complex than the ones that we are doing now.  So, it’s essential for us to master these skills now for us to continue with our exploration.

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SUNITA WILLIAMS: You know, our goal now that we’re, uh, we have a NASA goal of going back to the moon and going to Mars, uh, the main focus of

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the space station for U.S. science is how people are going to live out in space for extended periods of time.  Uh, over a six-month period we’re, you’re

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definitely, everybody’s going to lose, uh, bone and muscle mass, and so a big part of the experiments that we’re doing on board is how to, how to mitigate

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that.  And some of the, we’re all doing exercise protocols while we’re up there, trying to mitigate the bone and muscle mass [loss].  We do that using the

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treadmill, the, the bike, and also there’s a weight lifting, uh, machine that we use to, to work out and make sure our bones and muscles are exercised.

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Along with that, uh, we’re doing a nutrition experiment, which is something we’ve always done in the past as well as the exercise,

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to annotate what we are eating

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so we can keep a, a, a log, uh, how the food is affecting our bones and muscles.  Uh, but we’re adding one other part of that, where we’re taking

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blood, and that way we’ll be able to really analyze how the food is, uh, being metabolized and interacting in the body.

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Uh, that’s not going to be a real-time, uh, correction, correction type of, uh, experiment, uh, but with the shuttles

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rotating they’ll be able to take the blood samples down, and then we’ll be able to get some feedback from the,

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uh, scientists on the ground to analyze how, how our diet is actually working.

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So those are just a couple examples of, you know, the experiments that we’re doing on the body.

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