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Endeavour to Deliver International Promise of Space Station
By: Roy Mark
2009-06-12
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When the space shuttle Endeavour rendezvous with the International Space Station June 15, all five space agencies involved in the orbiting space laboratory -- United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and Europe -- will play critical roles in the ambitious mission to kick off the final building stages of the space station.The human space population is scheduled to more than double June 13
when the seven-person crew of the space shuttle Endeavour launches for
the International Space Station). All five
space agencies involved in the ISS -- United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and
Europe -- will have representatives at the space
station when the shuttle arrives June 15 with six Americans and a
Canadian.
The ambitious 16-day mission will need them all.
Endeavour
will arrive with a cargo bay full of work, including the final
permanent components of the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Kibo laboratory complex, a literal "front
porch" on the ISS for space-exposed science experiments. To store and
transport the experiments that the exposed facility will accommodate,
Endeavour will also carry a storage area similar to the logistics
module on the Kibo laboratory, but unpressurized.
Inside Endeavours cargo bay will be an integrated cargo carrier
holding several pieces of spare equipment for the space station. Most
of it -- a spare space-to-ground antenna, a spare
linear drive unit and a spare pump module -- will be stored on an external storage platform
on the station's truss. But six batteries for the stations oldest solar array will be installed.
All the work required will take five spacewalks over the course of the
mission. "Thats spacewalk, a day off, a spacewalk, a day off," said
lead Shuttle Flight Director Paul Dye. "And that just goes on forever."
NASA officials said the weather forecast for the 7:17 a.m. EDT launch
June 13 is "80 percent go." If the weather is uncooperative, NASA will
attempt to launch on June 14 or 15 before delaying the mission until
July. After June 15, the Endeavour must stand down because NASA has
scheduled a June 17 launch of an Atlas V rocket carrying the LRO (Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter) and the LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and
Sensing Satellite).
Once the Endeavour reaches the ISS, things will be as busy inside the
shuttle and space station as the spacewalkers, with all three of the
available robotic arms being put to use, sometimes all on the same day.
The shuttle's
Canadarm and the station's Canadarm2 will be put through their regular
paces for surveys, unloading cargo and moving equipment and
spacewalkers around, and a new Japanese robotic arm will be making
its debut to transfer science experiments.
"It's certainly really exciting for JAXA, said Polansky. "For them, this is the last of their hardware that's going to be
permanently attached to the space station. This completes their
series."
The mission also marks another milestone for JAXA with Japanese flight
controllers on the ground operating their own berthing mechanisms for the first time. The Kibo external
facility will never need to be connected to anything but a
Japanese-built module, so the Japanese were free to use any
berthing mechanism they wanted.
"Before, even when we had pieces of hardware that were built
by someone else, we have, here in the U.S. control center, still
maintained a lot of the technical leadership," said lead Station Flight Director Holly Ridings. "In this
case, they truly have technical leadership for some of the things that
must work to make the mission a success. It's unique."
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