The first of two standard Flight Readiness Reviews for STS-133 began this morning to evaluate the status of space shuttle Discovery and its payload. The meeting, which involves Space Shuttle Program officials and covers careful details of Discovery’s processing, is scheduled to last two days.
Workers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida today will move the rotating service structure or RSS away from space shuttle Discovery as it sits on Launch Pad 39A. The move is part of operations to prepare for the arrival at the pad of the payload canister holding the Permanent Multipurpose Module that Discovery is to carry to the International Space Station during its STS-133 mission. The payload is to arrive at the pad early Thursday morning. Technicians will lift the canister into the RSS where the module will be moved into the clean room there before it is pushed into Discovery’s 60-foot-long payload bay later.
STS-133 is targeted for launch Nov. 1 at 4:40 p.m. EDT.
At NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the training home of the astronaut corps and mission control, the Discovery astronauts will practice in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory today for the mission’s second spacewalk.