Crews Working Together, Preparing for First Spacewalk

Three station crew members took 398 photographs of space shuttle Atlantis’ heat shield on Sunday. The images were taken as the shuttle performed a back-flip prior to docking at 10:28 a.m. EDT and were sent down to Earth for analysis.

After the shuttle and station crews greeted each other, they conducted a safety briefing and began transferring gear and supplies.

STS-132 Mission Specialist Piers Sellers worked with Expedition 23 Flight Engineer Tracy Caldwell Dyson using the station’s robotic arm. They were working to move the Integrated Cargo Carrier from Atlantis’ payload bay to the station’s Mobile Base System.

Mission Specialists Garrett Reisman and Steve Bowen are "camping out" in the Quest airlock overnight to purge nitrogen from their circulatory system. The pair are preparing for the first of three spacewalks which occurs Monday at 8:15 a.m. and is scheduled to last 6.5 hours.