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5 p.m. CDT, Friday, July 14
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas
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07.14.06
| STATUS REPORT:
STS-121-21
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STS-121 MCC Status Report #21
Emptied of its cargo and refilled with returns, the Multipurpose Logistics Module Leonardo is back in the payload bay of Space Shuttle Discovery with just hours left before the orbiter undocks from the International Space Station and heads home.
First thing this morning Shuttle Commander Steve Lindsey and ISS Flight Engineer Thomas Reiter deactivated the cargo module, closed the hatch, and prepared it for removal from the Unity node. Just after 8:32 a.m. CDT Mission Specialists Lisa Nowak and Stephanie Wilson used the station robotic arm to uninstall Leonardo from ISS; the MPLM was reberthed in the shuttle payload bay at 10:00 a.m. CDT.
More than 7,400 pounds of cargo was delivered to ISS in the cargo module, and approximately 4,600 pounds of material including experiment samples, broken equipment and trash are now packed inside for return to Earth.
After the MPLM was returned to Discovery, Nowak and Wilson used the shuttle robot arm and the Orbiter Boom Sensor System to inspect the shuttle’s port wing. Similar to the pre-docking inspection on Flight Day 2, which was aimed at uncovering evidence of damage from debris at launch, this inspection looked for any signs of damage done by debris on orbit. None was found; inspection of the starboard wing and the shuttle’s nose cap will be done after undocking tomorrow, which is scheduled to occur at 5:08 a.m. CDT.
Early this morning, as Lindsey and Reiter worked at the MPLM, Nowak and Wilson joined Mission Specialists Mike Fossum and Piers Sellers, Pilot Mark Kelly, and ISS Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight Engineer Jeff Williams to discuss the mission in interviews with CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS.
The next STS-121 mission status report will be issued early Saturday morning.
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