Space shuttle delivers viewing window to ISS

Endeavour to Deliver a Room With a View

The International Space Station has been moving steadily closer to completion for the past several years. But what house is complete without a utility room, a gym and a picture window?

During the STS-130 mission, space shuttle Endeavour will deliver the Tranquility node and its cupola, a dome-shaped extension from Tranquility made up of seven windows. They will be the last major U.S. modules to be added to the space station, and together they’ll help clear out premium workspace in other areas of the station – as well as offer a window on the world.

At 15 feet wide and 23 feet long, the Tranquility node will provide a centralized home for the station’s environmental control equipment – one of the systems that remove carbon dioxide from the station’s air, one of the station’s bathrooms and the equipment that converts urine into drinkable water, all of which is currently taking up space in the Destiny laboratory. And there’s enough room left over to house the station’s new treadmill and its microgravity equivalent of a weight machine, moving it out of the Unity node where it’s in the way whenever spacewalk preparations are going on inside the adjacent Quest airlock.

“It gives us a much needed addition to the house, so to speak,” said Bob Dempsey, lead space station flight director for the mission. “We’re getting to the point where we’re really cramped for space. You might be surprised at that, considering we’re essentially the volume of a 747 and we’ve been adding modules for the last couple of years. You might think we’d be sitting around in a big empty house. But no – every inch is really getting packed up there.”

STS-130 Commander George Zamka put it another way.

“It’s like exercising in the office,” he said. “This will be a more logical organization, more focused.”




Though the node has an intensely practical function, there are still fanciful aspects to Tranquility. For one, its name, which was chosen with the help of a naming contest on NASA.gov.

“It harkens back to the Sea of Tranquility, where humans made their very first tentative landing on the moon,” Zamka said. “They were only there for a few hours, and it was at the very limits of what human beings could do. From that beginning, we’re now putting up a node that will house the majority of the life support equipment for the station, where we’re going to have a permanent presence in space.”

But everyone agrees that the real scope for the imagination will be provided by Tranquility’s 6.5-by-5-foot annex: the cupola. Its true purpose will be to provide a true view of robotics operations on the station’s exterior – such as those that will be required when the next module, the Russian Rassvet, is added during STS-132 – and in that it will be invaluable.

“Out the window is the truth,” Zamka said. “The video views that we use now, you’re trying to stick together and have a mental image of where things are. When you look out the window, you don’t have to imagine. It’s all right there for you.”

But there’s no question that many people – including Zamka – are looking forward to looking out of it for other views.

“Just the idea of providing this great view of the station and the world beneath us is going to be pretty great,” he said. “That’s not what it’s for, but it will be spectacular.” [...]

A pretty neat combination of form and function, it's both practical and fanciful. Follow the link for more pics and information.



     

New "bedrooms" and a 2nd bathroom for the ISS

I keep reading news reports about the "home makeover" for the International Space Station, talking about adding two new bedrooms and a 2nd bathroom, as if it were a house. The reality is quite different from any house you might experience here on earth.

For instance, would you call this a "bedroom"? Not by earthly standards:



It's basically a padded closet. On the right wall, you can see a thin sleeping bag stuck to the wall. That is the "bed" the astronaut uses. He/She zips themselves inside so they don't go floating around bouncing off the walls every time they move in their sleep!

As for the 2nd toilet, I think it looks kinda scary:


The Russian-made zero gravity toilet is no doubt very practical. I'm pretty sure there are sources on line that explain exactly how it works... for those who really want to know!

I got these photos from here:

Space.com: Shuttle Astronauts to Move In Aboard Space Station

Follow the link for more details and more photos of the other things they are installing, like the water recycling unit that will recycle urine into clean drinking water.

Just like home, right? But don't laugh - every home may have one, someday. Yikes.
     

Space Shuttle Endeavour to dock with ISS today

In fact, it's happening right now:


This mission is about expanding the International Space Station's capacity to hold a larger full time crew. Here is a photo of the Endeavour crew, and a summary of their mission:

Image above: These seven astronauts take a break from training to pose for the STS-126 crew portrait. Astronaut Christopher J. Ferguson, commander, is at center; and astronaut Eric A. Boe, pilot, is third from the right. Remaining crew members, pictured from left to right, are astronauts Sandra H. Magnus, Stephen G. Bowen, Donald R. Pettit, Robert S. (Shane) Kimbrough and Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper, all mission specialists. Image credit: NASA

Veteran space flier Navy Capt. Christopher J. Ferguson will command the STS-126 mission aboard Endeavour to deliver equipment to the International Space Station that will enable larger crews to reside aboard the complex. Air Force Lt. Col. Eric A. Boe will serve as the pilot. The mission specialists are Navy Capt. Stephen G. Bowen, Army Lt. Col. Robert S. Kimbrough, Navy Capt. Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper and NASA astronauts Donald R. Pettit and Sandra H. Magnus.

Magnus will remain on the station, replacing Expedition 17/18 Flight Engineer Gregory E. Chamitoff, who returns to Earth with the STS-126 crew. Magnus will serve as a flight engineer and NASA science officer for Expedition 18. Magnus will return to Earth on shuttle mission STS-119.

Endeavour will carry a reusable logistics module that will hold supplies and equipment, including additional crew quarters, additional exercise equipment, equipment for the regenerative life support system and spare hardware.

STS-126 is the 27th shuttle mission to the International Space Station.

You can read more about the mission's specific tasks here:

Station Prepares for Expanding Crew

Expanding kitchen facilities, adding more bedrooms and an extra bathroom all sound like home improvements that many homeowners have tackled. But when the “house” is the International Space Station orbiting 220 miles above Earth, things are a little more complicated than visiting the local home improvement store for materials. Just in time for its 10th anniversary, the space station will get a delivery via space shuttle Endeavour that might win a prize for out-of-this-world home makeover.

When Endeavour and crew lift off on the STS-126 mission for the 27th shuttle flight to the station, it will be packed with supplies like food and clothing for the station crew members. However, Endeavour’s major payload consists of equipment for enlarging the space station’s capacity to accommodate a six-member crew. The high-tech home improvement materials are stowed inside the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo, which will be tucked inside the shuttle’s cargo bay.

Some of the additions aboard will be: [...]

You can read the rest for the details, with photos too.

UPDATE: They have arrived!


Image above: The STS-126 crew is welcomed aboard the International Space Station by the Expedition 18 crew. Credit: NASA TV


Related Links:

Astronaut Donald Pettit
Our own Astronaut from Oregon. This is his official biography on the NASA website.

Astronaut Greg Chamitoff's Journal
A fascinating look at what the astronaut's life is like on the ISS.
     

Shuttle Endeavour to install "Dextre" robot arm and Kibo lab components onto the ISS

Below is an artists rendition of the new Canadian robot arm that the current shuttle mission will install on the ISS. They will also be installing a storage unit and other components of the Japanese Kibo lab, with the main part of the lab to follow on the next mission launch in May.


The Kibo lab will be the largest science lab on the station. The following is a description of the current mission from NASA (note that it was published prior to the mission, so it talks about it in the future tense):

All Aboard for STS-123: The Station Goes Global

“This is the first flight where we actually have all the partners,” said Dana Weigel, the lead station flight director. “It’s not just ‘a Japanese flight,’ or ‘a Canadian flight.’ This flight truly is the first time that it requires every single partner actively participating to make everything work. I think that’s a great milestone.”

Topping the list of milestones is the delivery of part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s module, marking the beginning of the agency’s presence on the station. The Japanese Experiment Logistics Module, Pressurized Section – called the JLP – is really just the warm-up act for JAXA. It will contain critical avionics and serve as a storage area for experiment materials. At 14.4 feet in diameter and 12.8 feet in length, it is the smaller of two pressurized Japanese modules. Combined with other elements, they will make up Kibo, the station’s Japanese complex, named for the Japanese word for hope. Kibo’s main facility and its robotic arm are scheduled to launch on the following shuttle mission, and a "front porch" that will allow astronauts to expose experiments directly to space will be delivered later.

But small or not, what the module represents is big.[...]

They mention the Robot arm as going up in a following launch, but it's actually gone up on this flight. Assembling the robot will be part of their mission. Below are the astronauts of the Endeavour crew:

Image above: From the left (front row) are Pilot Gregory Johnson and Commander Dominic Gorie. From the left (back row) are mission specialists Richard Linnehan, Robert Behnken, Garrett Reisman, Michael Foreman and Takao Doi, a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut. Credit: NASA

This mission will be the longest mission for a shuttle flight crew to date, scheduled to last a minimum of 16 days. You can track the latest news on the Mission's progress here:

Astronauts Enter JLP, Prepare for Spacewalk

Last time I looked, they had unloaded the Dextre robot for assembly, but were having some power supply issues with the platform it's to be assembled on.


You can read more about Dextre here:

'Dextre' Ready for Space Station Duty
It has some great links, including a link to a video about Dextre and Kibo.

Canadian robot Dextre heading to ISS

[...] The two-armed, $200-million robot is tentatively scheduled to be launched March 11 on board space shuttle Endeavour.

Daniel Rey, head of the technical team preparing Dextre, says the robot will reduce the amount of time astronauts must spend outside the space station. The robot could eliminate the need for up to a dozen spacewalks a year.

"He will free up astronauts so they can do more science and more research rather than maintenance,'' said Rey, who has worked on the Canadian Space Agency project for 10 years.

"It's easy to imagine from a half-a-dozen to a dozen sorties will be avoidable now,'' Rey said in an interview.

Dextre, short for Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, will perform exterior construction and tasks like changing batteries and handling experiments outside the space station.

Dextre also comes equipped with a tool holster which allows the robot to change equipment as needed "like any good handyman.''

But Rey said the 3.7-metre robot can't be compared to R2-D2 or HAL, the computer in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey.''

"He doesn't have an artificial intelligence. . .he can be remote controlled from the ground or from the space station.''

The astronauts who will operate the robot's rotating joints, torso and five cameras have already been trained at the space agency, just outside Montreal.

Dextre is the third and final component of the mobile servicing system developed by Canada for the space station.

It can either be attached to a mobile base which runs on rails along the exterior of the station or it can be connected to Canadarm2 like a snap-on tool.

Long life for new robot

The robot, which has a 15-year lifespan, will be installed during three of the five spacewalks planned in March. [...]

Fascinating. You can read the whole article for more details.