WEBVTT

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Music.

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GEORGE DILLER: NASA will continue building the International Space Station

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during STS-116, the 20th flight to the station. The mission is designated assembly flight 12A.1.

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It is Discovery’s 33rd flight and the 117th shuttle launch. Space Shuttle Discovery

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will carry seven crew members on its liftoff from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, set for December 7.

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During the 12-day mission, Discovery will dock with the station and the crew will deliver and install

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the P5 truss segment between the station’s existing P3/P4 and P6 truss segments during two of three planned spacewalks.

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Installation of the P5 truss will allow the solar arrays on the P3/P4 and P6 truss segments to operate and

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rotate without interfering with each other. The P5 truss will act as a conduit that

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will transmit power and data from the P6 segment to the other segments on the station.

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Prior to Discovery’s roll over to the Vehicle Assembly Building, Kennedy Space Center’s

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ground processing workers were hard at work inside the Orbiter Processing Facility

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preparing Discovery for mission STS-116.

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STEPHANIE STILSON: For this next mission, we've had what will be the shortest turnaround flow since return to flight.

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What that means is we had a shorter period of time to process the vehicle,

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especially in the Orbiter Processing Facility, where the bulk of the work for the orbiter happens.

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We had a short flow to begin with and then we had a request that came in and said, "If we could launch a week earlier,

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we could get the crewmembers back on the ground for Christmas and have them be with

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their families, which obviously we would love to have happen."

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So we accelerated the launch date, and by doing that, we then had to accomplish work in an even shorter period of time.

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Well, Discovery's team is great, but we needed help. So we pulled in folks from the Atlantis team,

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the Endeavour team, and we ended up working seven days a week,

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three shifts a day in order to get out of the Orbiter Processing Facility.

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DILLER: The excitement built as Discovery was stacked with the external tank

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and solid rocket boosters in the assembly building.

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RICK SERFOZO: The orbiter comes in from the Orbiter Processing Facility. We actually pick it up from horizontal,

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rotate it to vertical and actually mate it to the solid rocket boosters and external tank.

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We're talking about actually lifting and rotating a vehicle, and it has to be lifted up into the VAB,

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across a crossover and then lowered down and placed to be mated to the solid rocket boosters.

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DILLER: Then it was time for rollout to the launch pad and final preparations, including transfer of

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the P5 truss segment and SPACEHAB module from the payload canister into Discovery’s payload bay.

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ELIJAH WALKER: Boeing itself, we received this payload in 2001. And when we received the payload in 2001,

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it was only a small structure with nothing there. It was like a ladder, in a sense. But we didn't have anything mounted

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to that piece of hardware, and so the key was to get in there and start the assembly process, which was ideal.

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It took quite a bit of time, but it's finally completed.

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DILLER: Now, as Space Shuttle Discovery sits on Launch Pad 39-B, the nation and the rest of the world are watching

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and waiting as NASA’s space program moves one step closer to completing

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the space station and advancing the Vision for Space Exploration.

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Music.

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