Mission Preparations in Full Swing

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:30:59 PM GMT+0530

Preparations for STS-131, the next mission to the International Space Station, continue today at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida as technicians working on space shuttle Discovery at Launch Pad 39A calibrate the inertial measurement unit and test the camera located on the external fuel tank.

At NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio and Clayton Anderson are rehearsing procedures for their first spacewalk of the mission in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. The lab, which resembles a huge swimming pool, simulates as closely as possible on Earth the conditions the astronauts encounter working in the weightlessness of space.