This
story was updated on Jan. 5.
The planned
predawn launch of the space shuttle Endeavour next month may be the first orbiter
flight this year, but it is one of just five remaining missions before NASA is
slated to mothball its space plane fleet this fall.
Endeavour
is scheduled to blast off on Sunday, Feb. 7 at 4:39 a.m. EDT (0939 GMT) from
NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin a long-awaited delivery mission
flight to the International Space Station. The cargo: a new connecting module
and giant bay window for the orbiting laboratory.
The
spaceflight will be NASA's 130th mission for the aging shuttle fleet, which has
been flying
since 1981. Endeavour is due to head out to its launch pad early Wednesday.
NASA
currently plans to retire Endeavour and its sister ships Atlantis and Discovery
in the fall of this year after completing construction on the $100
billion space station. Their replacement, the capsule-based Orion ship and
its Ares I booster, is not slated to begin operational flights until 2015 at
the earliest, and potentially later. NASA currently plans to fly astronauts on
Russian Soyuz vehicles, and possibly commercial spacecraft, during the interim.
NASA officials
said last year that the months of margin to cope with delays between shuttle
flights has dwindled to a couple of weeks at the most. But they remain
confident that what remains should be enough, barring any unexpected – and
large-scale – issues in the missions to come.
Here is a
glimpse - courtesy of NASA - of the last five missions for the world's only
reusable orbital space planes:
5)
STS-130: Observation deck in space
NASA's
first flight of 2010 promises to give astronauts on the space station a whole
new view of their home planet when the shuttle Endeavour delivers the
Tranquility module, formerly Node 3. The mission is slated to launch on Feb. 4
with veteran astronaut George Zamka in command.
"This
flight will, I think, grab the public's attention," said Kirk Shireman,
NASA's deputy station program manager. "It's just going to be a really,
really neat module for those on board."
Tranquility
is the module TV comedian Stephen Colbert hoped would bear his name and the
last major addition to the station from the United States. The funnyman host of
Comedy Central's Colbert Report even won an online NASA vote to name the module
by encouraging fans to write his name in.
In the end,
NASA opted to christen the new module after Tranquility Base, the moon base
established by Apollo 11 astronauts during the historic first manned landing
in 1969. However, the Tranquility module will house an exercise treadmill named
after Colbert – a consolation prize from NASA – and other life support gear.
But
Tranquility's main cool factor stems from the seven-window cupola that will
serve as an observation portal for astronauts inside the station. The windows
will prime views of the station exterior during robotic arm work and spacecraft
arrivals and departures.
"The
dream of being able to go out and just have an unencumbered view of space –
we'll have it," Shireman said.
4)
STS-131: Experiments in orbit
Currently
slated to launch on March 18, the shuttle Discovery will carry a cargo pod
designed to attach to the space station like an orbital walk-in closet so
astronauts can deliver a pantry full of supplies. U.S. Navy Capt. Alan
Poindexter will command the mission.
At the
heart of Discovery's space station deliveries is a set of experiment racks
containing new gear to observe how the bodies
of astronauts change in space, as well as observe the Earth far below.
A window
observational research platform will add cameras, sensitive scanners and other
sensors to the Earth-facing window in order to monitor climate changes, sea
formations and crop weather damage on a global scale. An exercise system rack
called MARES will also be packed aboard Discovery. It is designed to study how
human muscles atrophy in the weightlessness of space by measuring changes in
the strength of bones and muscles over time.
Discovery
will also deliver a sleeping berth the size of a phone booth that will serve as
station astronaut's bedroom, NASA officials have said.
3)
STS-132: An international affair
The shuttle
Atlantis is expected to end its spaceflying career with the STS-132 mission, a
flight that will deliver a new Russian room and European robotic arm to the
space station. Navy Capt. Ken Ham will command the flight.
Slated to
launch on May 14, the mission will deliver the Mini-Research Module 1 (MRM-1)
for Russia's Federal Space Agency. Despite its name, the module will actually
be Russia's second small addition to the station since its counterpart, MRM-2,
will launch atop an unmanned rocket in Fall 2009. Both mini-research modules
will be attached to different parts of the station's Russian-built segment and
double as docking ports for Russian spacecraft.
The extra
robotic arm aboard Atlantis was built for the station by the European Space
Agency (ESA). It is designed to pluck experiments out of a Russian airlock and
attach them outside the station, use infrared cameras to inspect the outpost's
exterior and help move astronauts into position during spacewalks, according to
the ESA officials.
The mission
will be the 32nd and final flight for Atlantis.
2)
STS-134: The billion-dollar experiment
In a
fitting finale, NASA's last space shuttle flight will fly is expected to be one
that was never supposed to fly. It is STS-134, an extra mission tacked on to
fly a long-awaited Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a $1.5 billion particle physics
experiment that was shelved after the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster.
The massive
spectrometer weighs a whopping seven tons and is designed to detect cosmic rays
and measure their charge, momentum and velocity.
The U.S. Department of Energy-led experiment includes 16 international
partners. Researchers hope the powerful spectrometer will be able to measure
antimatter and the remnants of the theoretical Big Bang that gave birth to the
universe.
The mission
is slated to launch on Sept. 16 aboard the Discovery orbiter - the oldest
remaining shuttle after the tragic losses of Challenger and Columbia in 1986
and 2003, respectively. It will mark an end to what will be just over 29 years
of U.S. space shuttle flight.
"I'm
sure it will be emotional," NASA's shuttle program manager John Shannon
said in a statement. "But I suspect that it will not be sadness over the
passing of that era, but happiness that we were a part of it."
The flight
will be Discovery's 39th and last mission.
1) STS-133:
Spare part bonanza
Endeavour's
final flight is expected to ferry more vital spare parts to the International
Space Station as well as a cargo pod packed with supplies. The mission is slated
to launch on July 29.
"It
isn't glamorous, but it's really important for the space station to execute its
mission," Shireman said of the flight.
Chief among
the shuttle's cargo will be a debris shields for the station's Russian-built
Zvezda module and extra antennas for its S-band communications system. Extra
circuit breaker boxes, cooling system gear and a spare arm for Canada's
maintenance robot Dextre - a multi-limbed mechanical repairman - will also be
onboard mission managers said.
The cargo
pod, formerly known in NASA parlance as a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, is
expected to be left aboard the station to serve as an extra walk-in closet to
store supplies and equipment. It has been refitted to stay in space
permanently.
A series of
three spacewalks are scheduled to deliver the spare station gear. The mission
is also expected to test a new navigation sensor that could be tested on Orion.
It will be the 25th mission for Endeavour, which is NASA's youngest orbiter,
and will also mark the end
of construction for the International Space Station.
Assembly
began in 1998 with the launch of Russia's Zarya control module. When complete,
the station will contain large rooms and laboratories from the U.S., Russia,
Japan and Europe, a robotic arm and maintenance robot from Canada and draw
power from a set of expansive solar array that give the orbiting laboratory a
wingspan that could cover an American football field.
Even unfinished,
the space station can easily be spotted from Earth by the unaided human eye.
"The
assembly of the space station could not have been done without the space
shuttle, and the assembly of the space station is one of the great engineering
achievements of mankind," Shannon said. "So the space shuttle will
have done a good job."
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