Those steps are designed to eliminate the possibility of nitrogen bubbles forming in their blood during spacewalks and causing an attack of the bends, a condition that can affect deep-sea divers brought to the surface too quickly. On Tuesday Discovery will approach the space telescope with a series of burns to match its orbit. Brown and Kelly will maneuver the orbiter to a point directly beneath Hubble, then move upward toward it. There, it can be rotated and tilted to enable space-walking astronauts to better access its equipment bays. Discovery is in an orbit with a high point of 367 statute miles and a low point of 352 miles.
All systems are in excellent condition.
The next STS-103 mission status report will be issued at 11 a.m. Tuesday. This will add the e-mail address that sent the subscribe message to the news release distribution list. The system will reply with a confirmation via e-mail of each subscription. Once you have subscribed you will receive future news releases via e-mail.