CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Discovery's astronauts pulled off a tricky docking at the International Space Station Friday, setting the stage for a weeklong surge of hard-hat construction work at the high-flying frontier outpost.
In what amounted to a highly choreographed orbital ballet, Discovery commander Brian Duffy guided the shuttle on a looping cruise around the station before parking the ship at a docking port atop the 13-story outpost.
Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station are just seconds from docking on Friday in this view from NASA TV.
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The orbital linkup came off without a hitch despite the failure Thursday of the shuttle's main communications antenna, which doubles as a key rendezvous radar during dockings at the international outpost.
Relying instead on shuttle star trackers, cargo bay sensors and hand-held radar guns for crucial guidance data, Duffy and his crew eased Discovery up to the station about 1:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (17:45 GMT).
Docking ring latches on both the shuttle and the station snapped shut, joining the two spacecraft as they zoomed through space some 240 miles (384 kilometers) above the Russian-Ukrainian border northeast of Kiev."We have confirmation from the crew and the ground of contact and capture," NASA flight commentator Kyle Herring said. "The ring extension [on Discovery] is now firmly docked to the International Space Station."
"It was an excellent rendezvous," astronaut Ellen Ochoa told the crew from NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, adding that Duffy was able to make a fuel-efficient docking despite the loss of the radar antenna.
"That's good news," Duffy replied. "We were kind of wondering how we did."
Launched Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center (KSC), the astronauts set out on the last leg of a two-day trip to the station at about 10:10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (14:10 GMT) Friday, firing the shuttle's left-hand orbital maneuvering engine in a 16-second burst.
Trailing the station by about 8 miles (13 kilometers) at the time, the engine firing put Discovery on course to close the final gap between the shuttle and the outpost.
Crew mates Jeff Wisoff and Bill McArthur were peering out flight-deck windows and spotted the station shining like a bright star in the pitch-black vacuum of space.
"Just for your info, Jeff and Bill have been watching the station from the back with binoculars," Duffy told ground controllers. "They say it looks great."
Flying behind and below the outpost, Duffy pulled the shuttle to within 600 feet (182 meters) of the station about 11:40 a.m. EDT (15:40 GMT) before maneuvering the ship out in front of it.
A former military test pilot, Duffy then arced the shuttle up over the top of the station and made a final advance at the glacial rate of two-tenths of an inch (0.5 centimeter) per second.
"It's a very slow, methodical approach," said Herring.
~Construction ahead
Discovery's arrival at the station cleared the way for construction work to begin Saturday at the orbital complex.
Wielding the shuttle's robot arm, Japanese mission specialist Koichi Wakata will pluck the first piece of the station's girder-like metal backbone from a cargo bay cradle about 9:30 a.m. EDT (13:30 GMT) that day.
The 9-ton truss then is to be put in place atop the outpost, where it will serve as a temporary mounting platform for a pair of power-producing American solar arrays to be delivered aboard shuttle Endeavour after a planned November 30 launch.
Four consecutive days of spacewalking construction work then will begin Sunday as the astronauts wire up the truss and a new shuttle docking port that the astronauts plan to mount to the outpost Monday.
The highlight of the mission is expected to come Wednesday as Wisoff and crew mate Michael-Lopez Alegria test-fly jet backpacks designed to enable spacewalkers to maneuver back to the station if standard safety tethers snap, casting them adrift in space.
The jetpack test-flights are considered crucial because NASA still faces an additional 155 spacewalks to complete station assembly between now and April 2006.
Not all the work, however, will be done outside the station.
The crew also will spend a day inside the station, finishing electrical hookups to the truss and delivering supplies for the outpost's first full-time tenants, who are due to take up residence at the station in early November.
As it stands now, Discovery and its crew are scheduled to depart the station next Friday. The astronauts are slated to cap NASA's 100th shuttle flight with a 2:10 p.m. EDT (18:10 GMT) October 22 landing here at KSC.
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