Locator: 48073NASA.
12:15 p.m. CDT: at 15 meters separation. Will hold at the 10-meter separation point. Waiting for ideal lighting. Over Algeria right now. Going into darkness. Six-minute lighting hold before docking begins. Now holding at 10-meter hold, waiting for better lighting. Contact and capture at 12:34 p.m. CDT over Indian Ocean. Welcome aboard!
12:00 noon CDT: 5 cm / second -- speed. 300 cm / minute = 3 m / minute. Approaching. Both are traveling about 17,500 mph. Relative to each other, almost identical.
11:58 a.m. CDT: test-fired five (5) thrusters; able to recover four (4) thrusters. Thrusters being used to slow velocity of capsule. Now 80 feet away from space station. Mixing meters and feet in audio. Meters for engineers; feet for average American. Now 63 meters from docking station. 33 minutes away from "docking window." May "hold" longer before actually docking.
11:24 a.m. CDT: first docking attempt failed; next opportunity ~ 12.36 p.m. today; about an hour from now. As many as four (4) thrusters failed to fire. Will test-fire three thrusters between now and time of next docking attempt. So many glitches really tells us how amazing the US moon landing was back in 1969, and subsequent moon landings -- all successful, except one unable to complete moon landing mission but returned safely to earth.
Rice
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