Preparations for landing take center stage Sunday

STS-131 MCC Status Report #27

HOUSTON – Preparations for landing take center stage Sunday as the seven astronauts on space shuttle Discovery wrap up a 10-day stay at the International Space Station that included three spacewalks and delivery of more than seven tons of equipment and supplies.

The crew was awakened at 11:21 p.m. CDT by Louis Armstrong singing “What a Wonderful World,” played for Mission Specialist Stephanie Wilson, who concluded her third trip to the station on Discovery today. Wilson flew on Discovery for STS-121 in July 2006 and STS-120 in October 2007.

Commander Alan G. Poindexter, Pilot James P. Dutton Jr. and Mission Specialists Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Rick Mastracchio, Stephanie Wilson, Clayton Anderson and Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki are scheduled to land their spacecraft at Kennedy Space Center at 7:51 a.m. Monday.

On Sunday, Poindexter, Dutton and Metcalf-Lindenburger will checkout Discovery’s flight control systems and steering jets for the ride home to Earth.

At 6:36 a.m., the crew will have audio interviews with Mary Blake of WBZ-AM in Boston, Marcia Dunn of the Associated Press, and Brandi Smith of KEZI-TV in Portland, Ore. Wilson is from Pittsfield, Mass., and Dutton is from Eugene, Ore.

On board the International Space Station the crew’s work day is being shifted to its normal cycle. The next wakeup call for Expedition 23 Commander Oleg Kotov, and Flight Engineers Alexander Skvortsov, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Mikhail Kornienko, Soichi Noguchi and T.J. Creamer is 1:00 a.m. Sunday.