AMS Installed; First Spacewalk Scheduled for Friday‏

Attachment of the $2 billion, 15,251-pound Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) atop the Starboard 3 segment of the truss was confirmed Thursday at 4:46 a.m. CDT by Endeavour Pilot Greg Johnson and Mission Specialist Greg Chamitoff operating the station’s Canadarm2. Earlier, Mission Specialists Andrew Feustel and Roberto Vittori had used the shuttle arm to take AMS out of Endeavour’s cargo bay to hand it off to the station arm.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Samuel Ting, AMS principal investigator, congratulated crew members by radio from the station flight control room in the Mission Control Center.
Experts on the ground continue to perform analysis based on images taken from the station of Endeavour’s thermal protection system during the backflip maneuver while the shuttle approached the station. The teams are making plans to be able to do a focused inspection of Endeavour’s heat shield on Saturday. A final decision on whether the inspection is required or not is expected tomorrow.
Feustel and Chamitoff are scheduled to begin the first of the mission’s four spacewalks about 2:15 a.m. on Friday. The spacewalkers and Mike Fincke, their intravehicular officer who will help coach them through their activities, spent about an hour Thursday morning preparing tools for the spacewalk.
Tasks include retrieval of long-duration materials exposure experiments and installation of another, installation of a light on one of the station’s rail line handcarts, preparation for adding ammonia to a cooling loop and installation of an antenna.

NASA

Sport in brief (from Australia)

En härlig start på en vädermässigt härlig morgon

Det finns sämre sätt än att börja dagen med Grieg, för att sedan gå över till Mozart innan man tar itu
med nyheter om ondskan i världspolitiken och vissa geografiskt närstående personers illvillighet.
Välkommen till den vackra försommarmorgonen, till Grieg och till min visserligen anspråkslösa, men i bästa syfte gjorda  blogg .

Sir Fred Goodwin is not a banker or an adulterer

The finger of suspicion

So now we know. Previously Sir Fred Goodwin went to great lengths to try to convince us he was no longer a banker. Some feel he never was one. Now he has tried to convince the world he was not an adulterer or more accurately to stop us knowing he is an adulterer. The super injunction world is collapsing fast. I don't really care what Sir Fred gets up to in his private life. It's when it drifts into his public life. However, it would have been more gracious and courageous if he had admitted his wrongdoing and let the dust settle gracefully.

All he has done now is to confirm in the minds of the British public that the world of banking with his ilk in charge was a generally nasty, corrupt and self-serving industry. Banking has gradually lost its soul over the years. It is now more a heartless, avaricious industry rather than a caring, informative and constructive one.

Lord Stoneham has done us all a favour by revealing this nonsense of secrecy. It is in the public interest if those at the centre of a failing bank, one that would have been forcibly folded if the taxpayer had not coughed up blood to support it, are involved in personal relationships that may compromise corporate governance.

Good Night

IMF chief granted $1 million bail

Los Angeles Times
May 19, 2011
1:09 p.m.

A judge has granted Dominique Strauss-Kahn $1 million and home detention. The former head of the International Monetary Fund, who had been held without bail, was indicted today in an alleged attack on a hotel maid.

Tetra Paks nya mjölkflaska