The
three-man crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will do a little
housekeeping during a spacewalk next week to make way for future expansion of
the laboratory.
On July 23,
Expedition
15 crewmember Clayton
Anderson will
journey outside of the space station to throw two large hunks of unneeded
equipment towards Earth, officials said during a press conference today at
NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
"This
is the first time we've ever done a jettison quite like this on the space
station," said Bob Dempsey, NASA's lead flight director for Expedition 15, adding that smaller jettisons
have been performed on
past ISS and Hubble Space Telescope missions.
During the
upcoming spacewalk, Anderson will jettison a
1,400-pound
(635-kilograms) refrigerator-sized container of ammonia, or Early
Ammonia Servicer (EAS), away from the station at a gentle pace of one mile per hour (1.6 kph).
He'll also toss a 212-pound (96-kilogram) stanchion used to attach a camera to the
space laboratory toward the Earth.
Dempsey
explained that discarding the equipment during an extravehicular activity (EVA),
rather than shipping it back to Earth via a NASA shuttle, was the best choice
because of time and space constraints.
"It's
not a decision that's made lightly. Besides the fact that it might have some
use in the future, it provides space debris that could later impact the space
station," Dempsey said. He noted that moving the equipment around will be
necessary to make room for additions and repairs to the ISS during future
shuttle missions.
Once tossed
from the space station, both objects will be tracked by NASA for almost a year
until they begin entering the atmosphere. The agency expects the stanchion to
burn up completely, but think pieces of the ammonia tank may reach the Earth's
surface.
"We
don't know where it's going to land yet," Dempsey said, but added that it
will likely be over the ocean and shouldn't damage satellites or other
spacecraft in orbit.
In addition
to tossing the unneeded equipment overboard, cosmonaut Fyodor
Yurchikhin, Expedition 15's commander, will join Anderson on the spacewalk with cleaning and
repair duties. Flight engineer Oleg
Kotov will control the robotic arm to shuttle the astronauts around outside
of the station.
When the
EVA is complete, the space station will be boosted to a higher orbit to prepare
for docking with Endeavour early next month, as well as to avoid dangerous
encounters with the ejected objects.
"We
know the crew's ready," said Daryl Schuck, NASA's lead EVA officer for Expedition 15,
adding that Anderson and
Yurchikhin were trained on Earth for the jettisoning procedure. "We've got
confidence in our approach to this and confidence in our crew."
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