Full house at ISS as Discovery docks

AFP/Washington

On Discovery’s middeck, astronaut Nicole Stott, STS-133 mission specialist, enjoys a flight day 2 snack. She is holding an apple and a tortilla, food items that do not tend to create burdensome crumbs in the weightless environment of space

The US shuttle Discovery docked on Saturday for its final visit at the orbiting International Space Station, where all five of the world’s participating space agencies now have vehicles or equipment.
"This is the first time all visiting vehicles have something represented,” Nasa mission control in Houston said, after the oldest and most heavily traveled US shuttle linked up with the space outpost 350km over western Australia.
Japan’s HTV vehicle, Russia’s Progress and Soyuz craft, the European ATV-2 supply ship and the Canadian Dextre robot are all there, Nasa said.
Discovery arrived in spectacular fashion, with American commander Steve Lindsey executing a "rendezvous pitch manoeuvre,” a one-degree-per-second rotational back flip, before mooring at the space lab at 2:14pm (1914 GMT).
The act of latching on caused quite a stir at the crowded lab.
Discovery’s orbiter and payload at launch weighed 121,843kg, and the shuttle’s arrival caused a rocking-the-boat motion on the orbiting station that took about 45 minutes to smooth out.
"A hard mate between Discovery and the station was delayed to 3:04 pm ET (2004 GMT) while relative motions between the spacecraft dampened out,” Nasa said in Twitter message.
The mass of the floating ISS is now a whopping 540,000kg, Nasa said.
The arrival of the six-member US crew brings the total staff on board the ISS to 12. Three Russians, one Italian and two Americans, including commander Scott Kelly, were already at the station when Discovery arrived.
Kelly’s twin brother Mark is also an astronaut and is scheduled to fly on the US shuttle Endeavour’s last mission to the ISS in April.
The Discovery crew is delivering the Permanent Multipurpose Module, with extra storage space and an area for experiments, as well as some spare parts and the Express Logistic Carrier, an external platform for large equipment.
The shuttle has also brought the first humanoid robot to the ISS. The Robonaut 2, or R2, is a joint project of General Motors and Nasa and will stay behind as a permanent resident of the space station when the shuttle leaves.
A routine inspection of the shuttle heat shield found no apparent damage had been incurred during flight.