MARK POLANSKY: We have several things going on, on STS-116. Uh, we’re going to go ahead and
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
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
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
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
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
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,
primary electrical system working. And so, that’s going to be a very critical thing for the station.
WILLIAM OEFELEIN: We have several main objectives. One is we’re going to rotate out a, uh, space station crew member, uh, Suni Williams,
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
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.
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
– early electrical system, one that was just developed to, uh, kind of, uh, run just during the construction period.
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
on line. So, we’re going to activate the new electrical system, kind of the permanent electrical system,
and deactivate the, uh, the earlier or preliminary electrical system. And then, we have some other, uh, minor objectives, uh, as
well with, uh, some, uh, well, I guess one other big one, I should say, is, is attaching P5. We’re actually adding a,
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,
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,
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.
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,
so those are kind of the three big things.
NICHOLAS PATRICK: Well, this is the next building brick in, uh, in the main truss that holds out the
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
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.
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
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
rear windows of the cockpit and moving it, uh, with the shuttle’s robot arm, it seems pretty big to me.
ROBERT CURBEAM: The big thing is how the power is supplied or where it comes from really. Uh, space station was designed around,
uh, a truss, uh, what we call a main power truss, which spans space station and has solar array
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.
What we’re going to do is: We’re basically going to unplug space station from that truss and plug it
into this main truss, which goes span-wise across the station. And then, several flights later, they’ll take that truss that is sitting
on top of the station and put it in its permanent place outboard of the, uh, small spacer that we’re going to put
in. So, that whole port wing will have a, actually, that whole port truss will have four solar array wings,
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,
to the Russian segment, too. CHRISTER FUGLESANG: Actually, an interesting thing with the P5, uh, is how it’s put in place.
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,
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.
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
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
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,
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
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,
exercise. JOAN HIGGINBOTHAM: The, the missions are really complex now. Uh, 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! The EVA, the spacewalks are really complicated.
They have a lot of content in them. And,
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,
when we go back to the moon and on to Mars, I don’t think those operations are going to be any less
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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,
to annotate what we are eating
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
blood, and that way we’ll be able to really analyze how the food is, uh, being metabolized and interacting in the body.
Uh, that’s not going to be a real-time, uh, correction, correction type of, uh, experiment, uh, but with the shuttles
rotating they’ll be able to take the blood samples down, and then we’ll be able to get some feedback from the,
uh, scientists on the ground to analyze how, how our diet is actually working.
So those are just a couple examples of, you know, the experiments that we’re doing on the body.