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Shuttle skipper faces extra challenges

By IRENE BROWN, UPI Science News

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Nov. 9 (UPI) -- Commanding a space shuttle mission is always a challenge, but Jim Wetherbee's responsibilities are especially daunting.

Not only will the veteran astronaut oversee shuttle Endeavour's climb into orbit Monday -- and the ship's docking at the International Space Station two days later -- but, because the crew is a bit "short handed", Wetherbee will also have to operate the shuttle's robot arm during three spacewalks that are scheduled to be performed outside the station next week.

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"We've simply run out of bodies," said Wetherbee, who will be making his sixth spaceflight. "At this point, late in my career, it's one extra thing I can do on a mission that I haven't had the opportunity to do before. It will be an interesting extra challenge for me."

Endeavour is scheduled to lift off at 12:58 a.m. ET on Monday for a week-long stay at the International Space Station.

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The mission is virtually identical to the station assembly mission flown by the shuttle Atlantis last month, with the Endeavour crew slated to install a port, or left-side, truss segment that matches the starboard, or right-side, beam attached to the station last month.

The Atlantis crew, however, consisted of five astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut. Wetherbee's crew numbers just four. The extra seats on the shuttle are being filled by the new space station crew, which will replace the Expedition Five crew currently in orbit.

Endeavour's flight is the first to combine a crew transfer mission with an ambitious station construction job, said space station program manager Bill Gerstenmaier, with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Wetherbee's robotics skills will be tested in an unusual maneuver. He will use the shuttle's 50-foot-long robot arm to pick up the station's 14-ton truss segment out of the shuttle's payload bay and hand it off to the station's robot arm, which will be operated by Peggy Whitson, a member of the current station crew. The station's arm is blocked from reaching directly into the shuttle's cargo bay and the shuttle's arm is not long enough to attach the segment in its desired location.

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"We do a handoff maneuver," said Wetherbee. "I bring it up and come to a complete stop and then she grabs on to it. We're talking to each other through the intercom system (and) we can see out of our window, but the large structure that connects the two vehicles is sort of blocking our way so we use a lot of cameras and monitors and such to do that maneuver. It's a great challenge."

The robot arm operator job fell to Wetherbee by default: two of his crewmembers will be spacewalking and the remaining astronaut, pilot Paul Lockhart, will be choreographing the spacewalkers from inside the spacecraft.

If honing his robotics skills weren't enough, Wetherbee had to integrate a new crewmember into his small team just a few months before launch. Lockhart replaced the original pilot, Gus Loria, who was removed from the crew after what NASA said was a back injury. Loria, who has not yet flown in space, could not be reached for comment and has not been re-assigned to a future flight.

Incoming space station commander Ken Bowersox can understand Wetherbee's position. His flight engineer, Don Thomas, was replaced by backup Don Pettit in July. Thomas was disqualified from flight after a lengthy debate about a possible medical situation. Sources said the issue revolved around how much radiation exposure Thomas would have been exposed to had he flown the long-duration mission. NASA safety guidelines limit astronauts' cumulative radiation exposure to 3 percent of what is considered normal cancer risk.

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"The program is bigger than any one of us," said Bowersox. "And because what we're doing is important we need to keep pressing ahead, one foot in front of the other and make things work. That's what we're going to do with the extra challenge that's been handed to us with the late crew swap."

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