HOUSTON --
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will test a new U.S.
oxygen generator that will prove vital for the outpost's expansion to larger
crews.
Working in
tandem with flight controllers on Earth, the station's three-astronaut Expedition
15 crew is expected to activate the outpost's U.S.-built Oxygen
Generation System for the first time since its delivery last year.
"We expect
to generate, for the first time, U.S. oxygen from water," said NASA's deputy
ISS program manager Kirk Shireman during a Tuesday briefing.
Shuttle
astronauts delivered the
U.S. oxygen generator to the ISS in July 2006, but the new hardware had to
wait until another mission's crew - last month's STS-117 astronauts aboard
Atlantis - installed and opened a new
hydrogen vent valve outside the station's Destiny laboratory. A software
upgrade last week primed the oxygen generator for action, thought it won't be
required for full use until the station ramps up to its full six-person crew in
2009.
"This is
just a test," Shireman said. "If things go well, we expect to generate about 40
hours of oxygen."
Today's
check is slated to begin in mid-afternoon, around 3:00 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT),
NASA said.
The 1,500-pound
(680-kilogram) U.S. oxygen generator uses electrolysis to separate water into
breathable oxygen and waste hydrogen, which is dumped overboard via a vent in
NASA's Destiny laboratory aboard the ISS. A similar Russian machine, dubbed
Elektron, performs the same function aboard the station's Russian-built segment
and has served as the orbital laboratory's primary oxygen generator to date.
The current
Elektron and oxygen stores aboard docked Russian cargo ships are sufficient to
meet the life support needs of current crews, but future ISS expedition
astronauts will find the U.S.-built oxygen generator vital for normal
operations, NASA said.
"It's an
additional capability and an additional redundancy level," Shireman said of the
U.S. system right now. "[But] it's a major technology that's required to
produce oxygen to support the six-person crew, and it's a big step for us."
advertisement
