Triumphant Mission
Describing their mission as a “triple home run,” Discovery’s Commander, Pam Melroy, must have been pretty relieved. From NASA:
The crew of space shuttle Discovery left its mark on the International Space Station during two weeks in space that included adding a new piece, moving another and conducting an unprecedented spacewalk successfully.
“This is truly a triumphant moment for NASA,” Scott Parazynski said. “I think we obtained the summit and then some.”
“When I look back at our mission, it seems like we kind of hit a triple home run,” Commander Pam Melroy said a few hours after landing Discovery at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 7.
The seven astronauts connected a segment called Harmony that will serve as an attachment point for European and Japanese laboratory modules in the next several months. They also moved a tower of electricity producing solar arrays to the far end of the station’s central truss.
The group noticed a tear in one of the blankets as the arrays unfurled, and it took a concerted effort in space and at NASA centers to plan a spacewalk to repair the damage.
“It was an amazing thing to watch a large organization like NASA pivot so easily” to tackle the problem, Melroy said.
Parazynski made the repairs during a spacewalk that called for him to be perched on the end of the long boom normally used to inspect shuttle tiles.
“I had more butterflies than I normally do before an EVA,” Parazynski said. “It was just different than the prior spacewalks that I had done.”
With the repairs completed, the crew was cleared to return to Earth a day later than scheduled, but confident they left the station and its three crew members in good shape for future additions.
“It really was a beautiful moment for NASA,” Melroy said. “What you saw is who we are at NASA.”
Check out NASA’s site for more videos and behind-the-scenes info.
And if you missed the heroics of the spacewalk, watch this news report:
