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Intro Music

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Discovery lit up the night as the space shuttle raced into the evening sky on Dec. 9 to begin the STS-116 mission.

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The spacecraft left on a flight to swap space station crew members and update the lab's electrical system to generate maximum power.

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Commanded by Mark Polansky, the mission was highlighted by the success of three planned spacewalks and an unplanned foray to

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fix a sticky solar array.

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The first spacewalk was performed by Bob Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang to attach the P5 truss to the station.

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A day later, Discovery's crew tried to retract the P6 array already attached to the station.

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But the effort was stymied by binding grommets and guide wires, keeping the panel from being completely folded up.

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During the next spacewalk, Curbeam and Fuglesang set out to connect half of the cables needed to funnel electricity from the new P4 solar array.

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The wiring job went off without a hitch and far quicker than engineers had anticipated.

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The story was much the same when Sunita Williams joined Curbeam for the third spacewalk.

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The pair again made quick work of the rewiring, completing that task and installing a space station debris shield with plenty of time to spare.

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Before heading back to Discovery's airlock, mission controllers dispatched Curbeam and Williams to take a closer look at

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the jammed P6 solar array.

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There, they wiggled and jiggled the lanky array, hoping to coax more of its panels into a storage box.

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In the end, the crew managed to stow only a few more sections of the solar array, setting up Monday's last-ditch spacewalk to complete the job.

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Curbeam and Fuglesang proved triumphant in their bid when they used a robot arm and hand tools to free the sticky grommets and retract the P6 array.

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Following a week of showing how good teamwork makes the best plans better, the STS-116 crew departed the International Space Station.

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Discovery's roundtrip mission ended almost like it began: with a flaming burst of its engines in the orbital darkness, landing in its hometown

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at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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