Shuttle and Station Hard Mate Accomplished

A hard mate between space shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station was delayed until 3:04 p.m. EST, Saturday 26 February, while the relative motions between the two spacecraft dampened out. The station mass, now approximately 1.2 million pounds, with spacecraft, laboratories and robotic components from all the international partners attached at the same time, contributed to an alignment issue between the shuttle and station docking rings. The hard mate between Discovery and station could not be accomplished until the motion stopped and Discovery’s docking ring could be retracted.