OREANDA-NEWS. April 08, 2010. The seven-member crew of Discovery docked to the International Space Station at 3:44 a.m. EDT. After a series leak checks between the vehicles they opened the hatches and joined the Expedition 23 crew aboard the outpost at 5:11 a.m.

The crew docked the shuttle without radar because of the Ku-Band antenna failure. They are trained to rendezvous and dock without radar.

Before docking, Commander Alan G. Poindexter commanded the shuttle to slowly rotate so that its underside was facing the station. Expedition 23 Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Soichi Noguchi began photo-documenting the shuttle’s heat shield tiles. That imagery will be added to the video taken on flight day 2 and sent to the ground for study by specialists looking for any damaged tiles.

Earlier, Poindexter and Pilot James P. Dutton Jr. fired the shuttle jets to refine the orbiter’s approach to the station. Mission Specialists Stephanie Wilson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenberger, Clayton Anderson, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Naoko Yamazaki supported them on the flight deck.