spacetoday.net: Leonardo attached to station

Posted: Tue, Nov 18, 2008, 9:17 AM ET (1417 GMT)

The crews of the shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station attached a cargo module to the station on Monday as astronauts prepared for the first of four spacewalks planned for the mission. The Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) was lifted out of the shuttle's cargo bay and attached to the station's Harmony mode on Monday, and opened by Monday evening. Leonardo contains several tons of cargo, including equipment designed to expand the station's crew capacity to six. Ground controllers, meanwhile, said they had detected no problems with the shuttle's thermal protection system in photos taken during the shuttle's approach to the station on Sunday. The next major event of the STS-126 mission is a spacewalk Tuesday by Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper and Stephen Bowen, the first of four planned EVAs during the mission. The two will attempt to clean a joint on the station that allows a set of solar panels to track the Sun.