STS-88 Day 11 Highlights

Abstract

On this eleventh day of the STS-88 mission, the flight crew, Commander Robert D. Cabana, Pilot Frederick W. Sturckow, and Mission Specialists Nancy J. Currie, James H. Newman, Jerry L. Ross, and Sergei Krikalev are awakened with the song "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight". Pilot Rick Sturckow undocks Endeavour from the station and backs the shuttle away to a distance of 450 feet above the station before beginning a nose-forward fly-around. Later Cabana, Sturckow and Ross deploy the SAC-A satellite from Endeavour's payload bay. SAC-A is a small, self-contained, non-recoverable satellite built by the Argentinean National Commission of Space Activities. The cube-shaped, 590-pound satellite will test and characterize the performance of new equipment and technologies that may be used in future scientific or operational missions. The payload includes a differential global positioning system, a magnetometer, silicon solar cells, a charge-coupled device Earth camera and a whale tracker experiment.