Shuttle Docks with ISS

Space. com as usual.

Atlantis docked with the ISS this morning, and unlike many missions where the docking would be the highlight the day, they had to almost immediately set to work unloading the trusses and solar arrays the crew intends to attach in tomorrow's spacewalk.

"Atlantis’ STS-115 astronauts boarded the ISS by 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT), with mission specialists Daniel Burbank and Steven MacLean jumping into tasks to move a $372 million pair of trusses and solar arrays from the shuttle’s cargo bay to the end of the ISS robotic arm........ Burbank and shuttle pilot Chris Ferguson eased the 35,000-pound (15,875-kilogram) Port 3/Port 4 trusses out of Atlantis’ payload bay, at one time wrangling with clearances of just inches between the station segments and orbiter hardware, shuttle officials said."

The trussess will have to be connected to the P1 truss before the spacewalk tomorrow, the goal of which is to connect the new segments to power cables and heaters that will enable the new pieces to effectivley double the station's power capacity. The work is the first of three planned spacewalk construction tasks this week, all of which are expected to last about six and a half hours.