Discovery astronauts on the first shuttle trip to the International Space Station since 2002, and perhaps the last one for some time, worked today to unload tons of supplies and equipment brought from Earth for the station's two-man crew.
The shuttle astronauts originally had planned to give the station 15 tons of items stowed in an Italian-made cargo unit but were adding computers, office supplies, food, water and other items scrounged from Discovery in case there were no more flights for a while.
"We're looking forward to lots of nice goodies coming across (from the shuttle)," a space station controller at Johnson Space Center in Houston told the station astronauts.
NASA said yesterday that Discovery's mission would be extended by a day to give the astronauts time to unload the extra cargo. Return to Earth now was set for August 8.
Television shots showed the astronauts struggling in the weightlessness of space to move a large unit of research equipment into place on the station.
As space opened in the cargo unit, they were to fill it back up with 13 tons of space junk that has piled up on the station since it last linked up with a shuttle in November 2002.
Resupply of the space station took on added urgency on Wednesday when the US space agency announced it would ground the shuttle fleet after videos showed insulating foam from Discovery's external fuel tank breaking loose as the shuttle launched from Florida.
Loose foam from the fuel tank was blamed for the Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003, and was not supposed to happen again after NASA spent $1 billion and 2-1/2 years trying to fix the problem.
A briefcase-size piece of foam collided with Columbia's wing at launch and broke a hole in its heat shield. Columbia disintegrated upon its return to Earth, and the seven astronauts on board died.