Expedtion 13 Preparations for STS-115 Arrival

[Mark Nguyen]

So much has been focused on Atlantis and her fuel cell, that not much attention has been paid to our three friends currently IN orbit waiting for the winged warrior to arrive.

My question is, what extrordinary activities are the E-13 crew doing in preparation for the arrival of the shuttle? The RMSS is probably sitting on P1 right now ready for the transfer maneuver. Does the crew have to do any major environmental or logstical preparations before docking?

Mark

[dutch courage]

The most important thing they do is taking pictures of the orbiter's thermal protection system during the orbiter pitch maneuver.

[hop]

They also spend quite a bit of time pre-packing stuff that needs to go back on the shuttle, as well as checking out and organizing equipment that will be used in joint ops.