STS-114 Report #08 Friday, July 29, 2005 – 11:45 p m CDT Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

Astronauts Soichi Noguchi and Steve Robinson will step outside for their first spacewalk, and the first of this mission, early Saturday The six and a half hour spacewalk is scheduled to begin from DiscoveryÂ’s airlock at 3:44 a m CDT

Discovery’s crew was awakened at 10:43 p m CDT by the Japanese song “Sanpo,“ sung by a group of children, including Noguchi’s The Station crew was awakened at 11:09 p m CDT by a tone onboard

Noguchi and Robinson’s spacewalk preparations, including a pure oxygen pre-breathe and exercise procedure, will get underway at 12:39 a m CDT, with Intravehicular (IV) crewmember Andy Thomas’ assistance The procedure will purge the spacewalkers’ blood of nitrogen to prevent the painful symptoms of “the bends” while wearing their low-pressure spacesuits

About the same time, Station Commander Sergei Krikalev and NASA Science Officer John Phillips will maneuver the Station’s robotic arm into a position to support the spacewalk At 12:55 a m CDT the pair will “walk off” Canadarm2 from the Mobile Base System to the Destiny lab and change its operating base The arm will be operated by Shuttle Pilot Jim Kelly and Mission Specialist Wendy Lawrence during the spacewalk to help install the External Stowage Platform-2 (ESP-2) Attachment Device (ESPAD) onto Station

After the excursion begins and the spacewalkers have completed about an hour of tool setup, the first task is to test thermal protection system repair techniques Noguchi and Robinson will work side-by-side in DiscoveryÂ’s cargo bay at a pallet of purposely damaged orbiter heat shield samples They will practice the Emittance Wash Applicator (EWA) repair of tile samples and the NOAX (Non-Oxide Adhesive eXperimental) repair of Reinforced Carbon-Carbon samples

After the testing is complete, the pair will move on to their Station assembly tasks They will install the ESPAD and associated cabling on the StationÂ’s Quest airlock so that the ESP-2 can be installed on top during the third spacewalk

Next, Noguchi will replace a Global Positioning System (GPS) antenna on the StationÂ’s truss structure At the same time, Robinson will retrieve tools for the second spacewalkÂ’s Control Moment Gyroscope-1 replacement and swap connectors to restore power to the StationÂ’s CMG-2 The last job will be for both crewmembers to route cabling for the ESP-2 installation on the third spacewalk

Once the spacewalk has begun and the StationÂ’s airlockÂ’s hatch is opened as an emergency door, the hatches between Discovery and Station will be re-opened so the crews can work together to support the spacewalk and continue transfer work Commander Eileen Collins, Mission Specialist Charlie Camarda, Krikalev, Phillips and Lawrence will continue transferring water and other equipment to the Station from Discovery and the Raffaello cargo module The hatches will be closed before the end of the spacewalk again to allow the crew to re-enter the Shuttle airlock Once the crew is inside and the ShuttleÂ’s airlock is repressurized, the hatches will be re-opened

At 8:09 a m CDT, Kelly and Camarda are scheduled to perform additional surveys of DiscoveryÂ’s wing leading edge Reinforced Carbon-Carbon with the Shuttle arm and Orbiter Boom Sensor System They will use the sensors to focus on seven areas of interest along the port wing

The crews of Discovery and the Station are scheduled to go to sleep about 2:39 p m CDT

The next STS-114 mission status report will be issued Saturday afternoon, or earlier, if events warrant