Posted: Tue, Apr 24, 2001, 9:47 AM ET (1347 GMT)
The crews of the space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station met for the first time on Monday as part of a busy day of activities in orbit. Hatches between the shuttle and station opened Monday morning, nearly two days after docking, and the STS-100 and Expedition Two crews exchanged greetings. Later in the day the station crew moved the Canadarm2 robot arm installed outside the Destiny module Sunday, extending one end of the arm to a grapple fixture on the module. This sets the stage for Tuesday's spacewalk by STS-100 astronauts Scott Parazynski and Chris Hadfield, the second of two scheduled for the mission, where the two will connect power, data, and video cables to the grapple fixture and disconnect cables on the Spacelab pallet used to deliver the arm. The spacewalkers will also remove an antenna on the exterior of the Unity module which is no longer being used. The rest of the shuttle and station crews will be busy removing supplies from the Raffaello cargo module, which was attached to the station Monday. The module will be attached to the station for several days as crews unload supplies from the module and stow garbage and other materials to be returned to Earth before the module is stowed back in the shuttle's cargo bay at the end of the week.
