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Additional time was set aside today for procedural review for the third spacewalk planned to begin at 6:13 a.m. CDT Wednesday.
Expedition 13 Commander Pavel Vinogradov along with Flight Engineers Jeff Williams and Thomas Reiter spent most of the day loading items no longer needed on the station into the Multipurpose Logistics Module docked to the stations Unity module. Before being returned to Discoverys payload bay on Friday, the Italian-built Leonardo will be filled with almost 4,400 pounds of experiment samples, unneeded hardware and trash.
Included in the more than 7,400 pounds of supplies delivered to the station was a new window and window seals for the Microgravity Science Glovebox, a European Space Agency-developed enclosed workspace for science experiments involving fluids, flames, particles or fumes. Reiter, the ESA astronaut who joined the station crew last week, installed the new window and window seals today. Additional work will be needed after the shuttle departs before the MSG can resume operation.
Discovery Mission Specialists Piers Sellers and Mike Fossum, who already have spent 14 hours and 18 minutes outside the Discovery/ISS complex on two spacewalks, devoted much of the day to preparing their spacesuits and tools for the missions third Extravehicular Activity. The planned 6-½ hour spacewalk is devoted to testing a non-oxide adhesive as a repair material for the reinforced carbon carbon panels that line a shuttles leading edge, and the use of an infrared camera to detect unseen damage to RCC.
At 7:18 this morning the spacewalkers joined Pilot Mark Kelly and Mission Specialists Lisa Nowak and Stephanie Wilson to talk about the progress of their flight in interviews with the Associated Press and USA Today.
