STS-123
Report #06
5:30 p.m. CDT Thursday, March 13, 2008
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

HOUSTON – The crew of space shuttle Endeavour has a full day ahead, and by the end of it, the International Space Station will be as international as it has been planned to be.

Endeavour’s crew started their day at 3:28 p.m. The wake up song for the day, Bay City Rollers’ “Saturday Night,” was played for the station’s newest crew member, Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman.

Reisman will accompany Mission Specialist Rick Linnehan today on the first spacewalk of Endeavour’s mission. Linnehan and Reisman will be preparing the Japanese Experiment Logistics Module, Pressurized Section – or the JLP for short – for installation on the station’s Harmony node.

The spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 8:23 p.m. The work on the JLP is the first task on the timeline, but should be done by 10:23 p.m. At that time, the spacewalkers will begin assembling the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, also known as Dextre. Linnehan and Reisman will be attaching two arms on the Canadian Space Agency robot, which could be used in the replacement of certain components on the station’s exterior. The assembly will continue over the mission’s first three spacewalks.

Dextre was removed from Endeavour’s cargo bay just after 2 a.m., and the Space Lab Pallet on which it will be assembled was installed on the station’s P1, or port 1, truss segment. Flight controllers ran into a problem when they attempted to route power to the pallet, but were unable to. Ground teams are currently troubleshooting the problem. Dextre does not need power for the tasks planned for tonight's spacewalk and the problem will not impact today’s activities.

The next STS-123 status report will be issued near the end of the crew’s day at about 7 a.m. Friday, or earlier if events warrant.