Discovery undocks from space station

April 17, 2010 8:30 AM PDT
Shuttle Discovery undocks from space station
by William Harwood

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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--The Discovery astronauts bid their station counterparts farewell early Saturday, sharing a final round of hugs and handshakes before moving back aboard the shuttle and undocking from the lab complex. Separation occurred at 8:52 a.m. EDT as the two spacecraft sailed 220 miles above Papua New Guinea.

"Houston and station, Discovery, physical separation," shuttle commander Alan Poindexter radioed as the docking systems disengaged.

The shuttle Discovery passes behind the International Space Station during a photo-documentation fly around.
(Credit: NASA TV)

"Discovery, departing," Expedition 23 flight engineer Soichi Noguchi called out, ringing the ship's bell in the lab's Harmony module.

"Dex, you and your crew were excellent guests, we loved having you here, you helped us leave the station in a better place than when you got here," flight engineer Timothy Creamer radioed a moment later. "We'll miss you. Come back soon."

"Thanks, T.J. We enjoyed every minute of it," Poindexter replied. "Thanks for the great hospitality. We'll talk to you soon."

With shuttle pilot James Dutton at the controls on Discovery's aft flight deck, Discovery pulled straight away in front of the station before beginning a 360-degree photo-documentation fly around. Once back at the starting point in front of the outpost, Dutton fired Discovery's maneuvering rockets to depart the area.

"The pilot's big moment of glory is getting to do the fly around of the space station," Dutton said in a NASA interview. "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."

Discovery, passing directly beneath the space station, sails 220 miles above the coast of Brazil.
(Credit: NASA TV)

But the public will have to wait until Discovery lands to fully share that perspective. While occasional still photos from the shuttle were possible using the shuttle's S-band communications system, the failure of the orbiter's Ku-band antenna earlier in the mission will prevent routine live television from the shuttle for the remainder of its mission.

Discovery's mission, with seven crew members, marks the last time NASA expects 13 people aboard the International Space Station. The agency's final three shuttle flights feature six-person crews and there are no plans to boost the station's complement above the current half dozen.

"This is time when we have to say goodbye to our friends and colleagues," Expedition 23 commander Oleg Kotov, one of three Russians on the station crew, said during a brief farewell ceremony. "It 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."

Poindexter thanked the station crew for help with "a very successful docked mission and that is in large part due to the preparation that you 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.

Shuttle commander Alan Poindexter (blue shirt) hugs space station commander Oleg Kotov during a farewell ceremony before undocking.
(Credit: NASA TV)

"Again, I want to thank you and your crew for all the help you gave us with transfer," Poindexter said. "It was just great. We're sorry to go. I know we'd all like to stay much longer, but we have to let you guys get back to your normal routine and get ready for (the next shuttle visit). So with that, we want to say thanks again and we hope to see you soon back home. Take care."

The two crews then exchanged embraces and handshakes and the shuttle crew floated back aboard the orbiter for the last time. Hatches were closed around 6:30 a.m. to set the stage for undocking.

"Adios, amigos," Noguchi called as Discovery departed. "Sayonara."

Poindexter and his crewmates face a relatively light schedule for the rest of the day. A final heat shield inspection, normally carried out just after undocking, was performed Friday so the crew could use the station's Ku-band communications system to downlink the laser scans and video.

On Sunday, Poindexter, Dutton, and flight engineer Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger will test Discovery's re-entry systems while their crewmates pack up and rig the ship for entry.

Landing back at the Kennedy Space Center is targeted for 8:51 a.m. Monday, but the weather could cause problems. The Spaceflight Meteorology Group at the Johnson Space Center in Houston is predicting showers within 30 miles of the Kennedy Space Center at landing time Monday with a slight chance of showers Tuesday. The forecast for Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., calls for good weather Monday and Tuesday.

Weather permitting, Discovery's re-entry trajectory will carry the orbiter above the heartland of America during its descent to the Kennedy Space Center, possibly the last time viewers in the continental United States will have a chance to witness the fiery streak of a shuttle entry.

Facebook Future

Every so often a test Facebook feature pops up for some of the social network's 400 million users, and this week it was some sort of question-and-answer service. This generated more interest than a Facebook product prototype would have otherwise because a Q&A feature on Facebook would presumably compete with Quora, a new start-up founded by former Facebook employees--including CTO Adam D'Angelo, who left Facebook two years ago.

The "Facebook Questions" story was originally reported by AllFacebook's Nick O'Neill, who said a few readers had tipped him off to the presence of "Questions" on their Facebook home pages. "How are Burger King's fries produced?" one screen-grabbed question asked. (Personally, I don't want to know.) The user seeing the question could leave an answer or, interestingly, skip to the next question.Q&A, which falls into the broader niche known as "social search," is a subject of much interest on the Web these days. Already the focus of the likes of Yahoo Answers and Mahalo, social search fell back into the news earlier this spring when Google acquired Aardvark, a Q&A service that had been founded by a team of former Google engineers, shortly after unveiling its Google Buzz real-time communication product.

And then there's Quora, which some are now speculating may be in Facebook's crosshairs. Chatter about it led Blake Ross, the Firefox co-founder whom Facebook hired as its director of product when it purchased his Parakey start-up a few years ago, to dive into a Quora thread himself and quell concerns. (Quora is still in private beta, so the thread is only visible to registered users.)

"Sensationalism notwithstanding, I'm not someone who's driven by 'killing' someone else's baby," Ross wrote. "There are too many new and exciting things to give birth to. Even if Facebook were led by stoic businessmen (it's not), a 'Quora-killer' wouldn't make objective sense. Quora is a terrific product built on Facebook Connect. It isn't competitive with the core use cases of Facebook, which is why Facebook Questions is pursuing different use cases."

Those use cases, he explained, are to turn its defunct Facebook Polls product into a way to solicit answers to the questions people tend to ask in their Facebook status messages, like "When does the 'Lost' finale air?" Questions on Quora, meanwhile, tend to be generate long threads of responses.

Many see dollar signs in social search. One of the reasons that Google's search ads have been so lucrative is that when people use a search engine, they're looking for something--often which directly or indirectly connects to an intent to purchase. A question-and-answer service can offer an even more precise scenario for targeted advertising (considering it's even more obvious as to what they're looking for), not to mention the fact that people answering the question become additional targets. It can, over time, offer a fine-tuned, algorithm-produced profile of a user--a "taste profile," if you will, the term used by decision-making service Hunch, which offers a different slant on the Q&A space.

You could also dive into the conspiracy theories here. Aardvark sold for $50 million, a fairly high number considering the size of the company and its relatively limited reach. The price tag makes it safe to assume that there were probably other bidders for Aardvark--including, maybe, Facebook. Sure, Ross says he's not intending to "kill" anything, but social search is hot enough that Facebook probably wanted in on the action. The company absolutely could've afforded Aardvark and likely would have loved to have its engineers on board--take a look at its purchase of FriendFeed, also run by a pack of ex-Googlers.

What it all adds up to definitively, though, is the presence of Q&A as an essential feature for a big social-media power. It's about time. Hordes of start-ups have tried and none have quite pinpointed it yet; if nobody's asking good questions, nobody will bother responding, and if no one's providing quality answers, people will stop asking questions. Piggybacking such a service on top of an existing social network may be what finally gets people asking and answering en masse.