STS-131
Report #06
8 p.m. CDT Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

HOUSTON – Discovery’s crew is ready to lift the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module from the shuttle’s payload bay, mate it to the International Space Station’s Harmony module, and begin unpacking the 21-foot-long, 15-foot-wide moving van.

Leonardo is delivering 8 tons of cargo, including four experiment racks and the last crew quarters to be delivered to the station. This is Leonardo’s final round-trip to the station. When it returns on STS-133 it will remain as an extra room.

The shuttle crew’s wake up song, at 7:21 p.m. CDT, was “A Pigeon and a Boy” by Joe Hisaishi, played for Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Naoko Yamazaki.

On the first full day of joint docked operations the astronauts on space shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station will unberth Leonardo and maneuver it into place for installation on Harmony’s nadir, or Earth-facing, port. Mission Specialists Stephanie Wilson and Yamazaki will operate the station’s robotic arm to perform that operation.

Once it’s berthed, Mission Specialist Clayton Anderson and Expedition 23 Flight Engineer Soichi Noguchi will prepare Leonardo’s hatch for opening, presently planned for 7:01 a.m. Thursday.

At 7:16 a.m. Commander Alan G. Poindexter and Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio and Wilson will discuss the mission with the Tom Joyner Syndicated Radio Show in Dallas, Texas, WVIT-TV in Hartford, Conn., and Fox News Radio. Mastracchio is from Connecticut.

Later in the day, Pilot James P. Dutton Jr. will join Anderson and Mastracchio to review procedures for the first spacewalk of the mission. Anderson and Mastracchio will end their day preparing for Friday morning’s spacewalk by camping overnight in the Quest airlock at a reduced atmospheric pressure. That will facilitate the purge of nitrogen from their bloodstreams as a measure against suffering from decompression sickness during the spacewalk, which is scheduled to begin at 12:41 a.m. Friday.

The next shuttle status report will be issued after the crew’s work day, or earlier if warranted.