STS-131 Mission’s first spacewalk

8 p.m. CDT Thursday, April 8, 2010


Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

STS-131 MCC Status Report #08 HOUSTON – Mission Specialists Clayton Anderson and Rick Mastracchio will leave the Quest airlock after midnight for the mission’s first spacewalk to prepare a new ammonia tank and gyro assembly for the International Space Station and to retrieve a science experiment from the station’s porch, the Japanese Kibo Laboratory’s exposed facility.

The wakeup call at 7:51 p.m. CDT for the astronauts on board Discovery was “Defying Gravity,” from the musical “Wicked,” sung by Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth, played for Mission Specialist Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, who will be choreographing Anderson and Mastracchio.

The 6.5-hour spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 12:41 a.m. Mastracchio, the mission's lead spacewalker, will wear a spacesuit marked with red stripes, while Anderson will wear an all-white spacesuit.

The two will perform three spacewalks during their time at the station. Anderson and Mastracchio performed two spacewalks together during the STS-118 mission in August 2007.

During the spacewalk, Pilot James P. Dutton Jr. and Mission Specialist Stephanie Wilson will use the station’s robotic arm to remove the new ammonia tank from the shuttle’s payload bay.

Commander Alan G. Poindexter and Mission Specialist Naoko Yamazaki, along with the Expedition 23 crew, will continue with the transfer of supplies from the shuttle to the station. The crew will be transferring about 7.6 tons to the station. They will pack the empty Multi-Purpose Logistics Module and middeck with 3.4 tons of science experiments and trash to return home. The two crews have moved more than half the equipment and supplies from the shuttle’s middeck but have only completed 11 percent of the total transfer requirement.