The fully
staffed International Space Station is about to get even more crowded when seven
shuttle astronauts join the six men already aboard, boosting the number of
people aboard to 13 - its highest population ever.
NASA's
shuttle Endeavour is set to launch toward the $100 billion space station Saturday morning and
arrive two days later to deliver a
Japanese space porch during a marathon
16-day flight that includes five spacewalks.
"We're kind
of having a population
explosion in space, you know, with the 13 or so people will be up there," said
Dave Wolf, Endeavour's chief spacewalker, in a NASA interview. "That will be
interesting."
Maxing
out station capacity
The space
station has never hosted 13 people at the same time, though it has seen joint
crews of 10 during past shuttle visits. In fact, 13 has been the historical
maximum population in orbit. But it has been typically spread across
several spacecraft like the station, a shuttle and an in-bound Russian Soyuz
vehicle.
"It will be
challenging, because we've never worked together as a crew of 13 before...ever,"
Polansky said in an interview. "So the first time we do this will be when we
actually get up there, and the hatches are open."
The station
is home to a full six-man crew - two Russian cosmonauts and one astronaut each
from the United States, Japan, Belgium and Canada. Together, the spaceflyers
represent each of the station's major international partners. Endeavour will
dock at the station with six more American astronauts and another Canadian
spaceflyer aboard.
American
flight engineer Michael Barratt joined the station crew in March when only
three people were aboard. With nine different modules, two bathrooms, two
kitchens and ample exercise gear, the station is as long as a
football field and rivals a jumbo jet's interior for living space. It can be seen
easily from Earth by the unaided eye.
"Six people
still don't quite fill it," Barratt said last week, adding that life aboard
will change once Endeavour's crew arrives. "It will be busy. There will be a
lot of coordination, a lot activity, and a lot of patience."
The space
station's Russian and American air scrubbers, which clean potentially poisonous
carbon dioxide from the outpost's living areas, cannot handle the load created
by all 13 people aboard, mission managers said. Endeavour astronauts will have
to use the shuttle's system to make up for the difference.
At least
four shuttle astronauts will also have to use one of the space station's two
bathrooms every day. Once Endeavour astronauts install the station's new
Japanese porch, they can't dump the shuttle's toilet waste overboard for fear
of contaminating the brand new experiment platform.
Mission
managers said the visiting shuttle astronauts will be free to partake of the
station's recycled drinking water while aboard. The station crew has been
drinking the water, which is recycled
from urine, sweat and condensation, since last month.
"The water
is great," Barratt said. "It's probably as good as, or better, than anything
you'd buy in a fancy bottle on the ground. We use it every day."
Crowd
control in space
While the
shuttle and space
station astronauts are free to work out their population issues on their
own, there are some guidelines they can follow. At the top of Mission Control's
list is communication.
Imagine 13 people
in your house, all of them performing different chores and having different questions,
said Holly Ridings, NASA's lead station flight director.
"If
you're the one single person in that house who can answer all of the questions
such as one of the control centers on the ground, well, you can't all ask those
questions at the same time," Ridings said.
Polansky
plans to meet daily with the station's Russian commander Gennady Padalka to
make sure both crews are on the same page and find out if, like any household on
Earth, there are places on the station the shuttle astronauts shouldn't touch
without permission.
"In terms
of just being good houseguests, every shuttle crew tries to do that," Polansky
said in an interview. "Any time we have a task that requires us to use their
equipment, we will always ask them first before we just barge in there and do
it."
Polansky
does not expect it to be easy, especially when you have 13 driven people trying
to work together.
"Sometimes
one of the problems can be that everyone wants to help," Polansky said. "With
the old adage of too many cooks, you could have too many people trying to help
out and do less with more."
Careful
communication and focus, in space and on Earth, should clear up some of the
confusion, Polansky said, but unexpected hurdles are almost a sure bet.
"I am sure
there are going to be growing pains," Polansky said. "There's no doubt about
it."
SPACE.com
will provide complete coverage of Endeavour's STS-127 mission with staff writer
Clara Moskowitz in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Senior Editor Tariq Malik in New
York. Click here for live coverage,
mission updates and a link to NASA TV.
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