Tom's WEB Blog

The crews of space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station have completed their first day as an orbital team, beginning 12 days of joint operations. About an hour before docking, which occurred at 11:49 p.m. Wednesday, STS-123 Commander Dominic Gorie guided the shuttle through a back-flip maneuver, giving the Expedition 16 crew the opportunity to take pictures of the orbiter’s protective heat-resistant tiles. These photos were sent to engineers on Earth for analysis. The STS-123 and Expedition 16 crews opened the hatches between Endeavour and the station at 1:36 a.m. The crews then spent time preparing for the first of five scheduled STS-123 spacewalks, which Mission Specialist Rick Linnehan and Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman will begin at 9:23 p.m. Thursday. Shortly after Endeavour’s arrival at the station, Reisman traded places with Flight Engineer Léopold Eyharts, a European Space Agency astronaut, to join the Expedition 16 crew. Eyharts will return to Earth aboard Endeavour.

Shuttle Endeavour and a crew of seven blasted into orbit Tuesday on what was to be the longest space station mission ever, a 16-day voyage to build a gangly robot and add a new room that will serve as a closet for a future lab. The space shuttle roared from its seaside pad at 2:28 a.m., lighting up the sky for miles around as it took off on a multinational flight involving Canada and Japan. It was a rare treat: The last time NASA launched a shuttle at nighttime was in 2006. Only about a quarter of shuttle flights have begun in darkness. Endeavour's countdown was the smoothest in years, officials said. Shortly after liftoff, however, the astronauts had to deal with a couple of problems that ended up being minor. They got alert messages for some of their ship's steering thrusters, but it turned out to be a bad electronics card. Then the primary cooling system failed, and they had to switch to the backup.bA cursory look at the initial launch images -- fewer than usual because of the nighttime launch -- showed only one significant loss of debris from the external fuel tank 83 seconds into the flight. But it appeared to miss the right wing. In any event, Endeavour will be checked thoroughly in orbit for any potential damage, standard procedure ever since the loss of Columbia because of a foam strike.

The rotating service structure has been rolled away from space shuttle Endeavour in a major milestone leading up to launch. The liftoff of Endeavour on the STS-123 mission remains on schedule for 2:28 a.m. EDT Tuesday, March 11. The movement of the enclosed gantry clears the way for the loading of about 500,000 gallons of supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants into the orange external tank this evening. The rotating service structure provides weather protection to the shuttles at the launch pad and gives technicians access to the shuttle. The current weather forecast calls for only a 10 percent chance atmospheric conditions will delay the launch, with the primary concern coming from a slight chance of a low cloud ceiling around Kennedy. The flight is commanded by Dominic Gorie with Gregory H. Johnson serving as Pilot. The crew also includes Mission Specialists Rick Linnehan, Robert L. Behnken, Mike Foreman, Garrett Reisman and Japanese astronaut Takao Doi. The crew will deliver the first section of the Japanese-built Kibo laboratory and the Canadian Space Agency's two-armed robotic system called Dextre. Dextre will be flying up aboard Endeavour in pieces, and it will be up to a team of spacewalking astronauts to assemble the 3,400-pound robot and attach it to the outside of the space station. That job will fall to Reisman, Michael Foreman and Richard Linnehan. Equipped with a tool holster, Dextre is designed to assist spacewalking astronauts and, ultimately, to take over some of their dangerous outdoor work. Dextre can pivot at the waist, and has seven joints per arm. Its hands, or grippers, have built-in socket wrenches, cameras and lights. Space station astronauts will be able to control Dextre, as will flight controllers on the ground. The robot will be attached at times to the end of the space station arm, and also be able to ride by itself along the space station arm's railway.

This is a shot of Odin the white Bengal Tiger at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.

Click the link

http://www.earthshots.org/2008/03/tiger-shark-by-buck-forester/

Very cool site!