#sts-120

[nocternalrandomness]

STS-120 / EOM: November 7, 2007

[lonestarflight]

"Discovery after undocking from the ISS during the STS-120 Mission

Backdropped by a blue and white Earth, Space Shuttle Discovery is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 16 crewmember after the shuttle undocked from the International Space Station. Earlier the STS-120 and Expedition 16 crews concluded 11 days of cooperative work onboard the shuttle and station. Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 4:32 a.m. (CST) on Nov. 5, 2007."

Date: November 5, 2007

NASA ID: ISS016-E-009765

[lonestarflight]

"Discovery after undocking from ISS during the STS-120 Mission

Backdropped by a blue and white Earth, Space Shuttle Discovery is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 16 crewmember after the shuttle undocked from the International Space Station. Earlier the STS-120 and Expedition 16 crews concluded 11 days of cooperative work onboard the shuttle and station. Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 4:32 a.m. (CST) on Nov. 5, 2007. A Soyuz spacecraft docked to the station is visible in the foreground."

Date: November 5, 2007

NASA ID: ISS016-E-009791

[everybittexas]

Six astronauts are standing on a tarmac in November 2007, freshly back from orbit, and they are about to get a welcome-home party at a hangar on the south end of Ellington Field in Texas. Let's talk about what they actually did up there for fifteen days. Commander Pamela Melroy and her crew — Pilot George Zamka, and Mission Specialists Paolo Nespoli, Doug Wheelock, Stephanie Wilson, and Scott Parazynski — weren't up there floating around looking at Earth and eating freeze-dried ice cream. They were *building something*. Specifically, they installed the Harmony Node 2 module onto the International Space Station. Node 2. Harmony. The piece that would eventually allow European and Japanese laboratory modules to connect to the rest of the station. That's not a minor errand. That's load-bearing architecture assembled in the vacuum of space by human hands in pressurized gloves. And then, because apparently that wasn't enough, they also relocated the P6 truss. Moved a massive solar array truss to a different position on the station's backbone. On the same mission. Scott Parazynski is on that tarmac looking composed, which is impressive given that during this mission he performed one of the most dangerous spacewalks in ISS history — working near live electrical components on a damaged solar array. The details of that particular moment deserve their own post, their own documentary, their own everything. But right now, in this photograph, it's November 7th and they've just landed at Kennedy Space Center and they are headed home to Houston. To Ellington Field, which has been the return address for astronauts since the earliest days of human spaceflight. There's a ceremony waiting at Hangar 276. Families, colleagues, the particular kind of exhausted joy that comes from having done something genuinely hard and genuinely important. There's something worth sitting with here: the work of building the ISS happened in increments exactly like this one. Mission by mission. Module by module. Truss by truss. No single flight completed the station — it was accumulated human effort over years, each crew handing something off to the next. Melroy's crew left Harmony up there, and someone else's crew would come along and connect the next piece to it. That's not how we usually tell stories about space. We like singular moments — the moon landing, the first step, the famous photograph. But most of what actually got built, got built quietly, on missions most people couldn't name if you asked them. What does it mean to do work that's genuinely historic but that almost nobody will remember by name?

[spookluvr]

October 30, 2007 --- Astronaut Doug Wheelock, STS-120 mission specialist, participated in the third scheduled session of extravehicular activity (EVA) as construction continued on the International Space Station (ISS). During a 7-hour and 8-minute space walk, Wheelock and mission specialist Scott Parazynski (out of frame), installed the P6 truss segment with its set of solar arrays to its permanent home, installed a spare main bus switching unit on a stowage platform, and performed a few get-ahead tasks.

[spaceflight-insider]

Review: The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space and Speed

Review: The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space and Speed

NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski conducts an unplanned EVA to repair a damaged solar array on the International Space Station during STS-120. Photo Credit: NASA

Those suffering from an inferiority complex probably shouldn’t read the new book, The Sky Below. An in-depth review of the many adventures of former NASA shuttle astronaut Scott Parazynski, it covers his many accomplishments and at the…

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[commandmodulepilot]

Backflip

Year: 2007 - Mission: STS-120 - Target: International Space Station

Astronaut Pam Melroy, the second woman to command a shuttle mission, flips Discovery to allow the space station crew to photograph the orbiter’s heat shild, bringing «Harmony» to the station.

[photos-mdx]

STS-120 Discovery