NASA's space shuttle Discovery is set to be transported to Launch Pad 39A at 4 a.m. EST Wednesday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crawler-transporter with the shuttle stack on board will take about six hours to make the 3.4-mile journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the pad.
The mission payload, consisting of the S6 truss segment and U.S. solar arrays which was delivered to the pad earlier in the week, was transferred to the pad's changeout room.
The changeout room is the enclosed, environmentally controlled area of the rotating service structure that supports cargo delivery to the pad and installation into the shuttle's payload bay.
At NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the STS-119 mission astronauts are in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory practicing techniques they'll be performing on the mission's fourth spacewalk.
Shuttle Mission: STS-119
Commander Lee Archambault will lead a crew of seven, along with Pilot Tony Antonelli, and Mission Specialists Joseph Acaba, John Phillips, Steve Swanson, Richard Arnold and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata.
The astronauts will fly to Kennedy for a full-dress rehearsal called the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, or TCDT, scheduled for Jan. 19-21.
They will have the opportunity to check out the spacecraft and payload, try on their custom-made flight suits and review safety procedures.
Discovery's STS-119 mission to the International Space Station is targeted to lift off at 7:32 a.m. EST, Feb. 12.
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