Discovery astronauts at the International Space Station bid farewell to their counterparts early on Saturday before moving back to the shuttle for undocking. The 13 member crew congratulated each other on a successful three spacewalk resupply mission.
Commander of Expedition 23, Oleg Kotov said,” This is time when we have to say goodbye to our friends and colleagues,". The Russian also said,” t was an excellent crew, shuttle Discovery flight 19A did excellent job, we enjoyed working with them and it's really, really sad to let them go, but it's time. Let me say again, thank you very much, we're really grateful for your help and your job you did for us. Thanks a lot."
Discovery Commander Alan Poindexter was thankful of the station crew for their help in “a successful docked mission” and that was largely because of the preparation that they did ahead of time.
You treated us with just the utmost hospitality and we felt welcome the whole time," he said. "We hope we didn't tear up your house too much. We tried to do a good job of cleaning when we left. It was a great docked mission, very successful, we had three just outstanding EVAs and a lot of great robotics. The transfer team was just fantastic.”
"Again, I want to thank you and your crew for all the help you gave us with transfer," Poindexter said. The two crews exchanged embraces and handshakes before the shuttle crew boarded the orbiter for the last time. This was followed by undocking.
Discovery was scheduled to undock at 8.52 a.m. which was being piloted by James Dutton. He planned to do a 360 degree photo documentation fly around before leaving the station. In a NASA interview, Dutton said, "The pilot's big moment of glory is getting to do the fly-around of the space station,"
"So we'll undock, back away around 400 to 450 feet in front of the space station and then begin to fly a maneuver over the top in front of the space station, essentially complete a 360-degree arc around the space station. Then we'll continue to maneuver to essentially break out of our orbit with the station, so we'll get a real panoramic view. As big as the station is now, I can't really imagine how breathtaking that will be, getting to see it from every perspective."
The photo documentation will be shared with the general public only after Discovery touches down. Failure of the Ku band antenna of the shuttle means that the routine live television from the shuttle will not be possible.
On the other hand Poindexter and his crew will do a heat shield inspection which is a normal activity after any undocking. The heat shield inspection was done so that the crew could use the station’s Ku band communication systems to downlink the laser scans and video.
Dutton and flight engineer Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger will check discovery’s reentry system on Sunday while others will pack up and rig the ship for reentry. Landing at the Kennedy Space Center is scheduled on Monday morning at 8.51 a.m. subject to weather conditions.
