STS-116 - Mission Highlights

Mission Highlights

• The STS-116 mission delivered and attached the International Space Station's third port truss segment, the P5 truss.
• The STS-116 mission brought to the Station Expedition 14 crew member Sunita Williams (who subsequently established a record for most time in space for a female astronaut) and brought home Expedition 14 crew member Thomas Reiter from European Space Agency (launched by STS-121).
• Christer Fuglesang became Sweden's first astronaut. His flight was a rare occurrence of two ESA astronauts flying in space together.
• The third of three SPHERES testbeds launched to the ISS.
• Astronauts completed major rewiring of the electrical system of the International Space Station in order to bring online the P3/P4 solar array installed by STS-115 in September 2006.
• Additional rewiring was done to ISS Pressurized Mating Adapter 2 (PMA2) to enable Station-Shuttle Power Transfer System (SSPTS) commencing with STS-118.
• One half of the original P6 solar array installed by STS-97 was folded to make room for the new P4 array deployed by STS-115 to rotate and track the sun.
• STS-116 was the last STS mission scheduled for launch from pad 39B. The pad will be refitted for upcoming Ares I launches.
• The crew of STS-116 consisted of five rookie astronauts. Only Mission Commander Mark Polansky (2) and Mission specialist Robert Curbeam (3) had previously flown in space.
• Robert Curbeam became the first astronaut to make four EVAs during the same mission.
• This was the first mission with two African-American crewmembers.