Its purpose now served, the shipping pallet used to
launch and then configure a Canadian two-armed robot for the International
Space Station (ISS) will be reinstalled into space shuttle Endeavour's payload
bay on Tuesday, in preparation for returning it to Earth.
Modified to support the Canadian Space Agency's Special
Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (SPDM), or Dextre robot, this Spacelab
Logistics Pallet (SLP) was making its fourth and final flight to space,
concluding a long history that can be traced back before the first shuttle left
the launch pad.
The pallet is not the only item
making the roundtrip from the Earth to the space station and back.
Stowed on-board Endeavour's middeck is a collection of soon-to-be space
artifacts, ranging from a few hundred mission patches to a celebrity's playbill
title page.
A pallet with a past
"Sadly, this is its last flight," wrote Scott
Higginbotham, mission manager in the International Space Station and Spacecraft
Processing Directorate at the Kennedy Space Center, in an e-mail to
collectSPACE.
More than 10 such Spacelab carriers were built in Europe
for the United States' shuttle program. This pallet, noted by the serial number
MD002, was delivered to ERNO, the predecessor to the European Space Agency, on
January 21, 1980, more than a year before the first shuttle launch.
Its own first flight came five and a half years later
aboard shuttle Challenger's eight day STS-51F mission. Flying as the forward
pallet in a three pallet "train", it helped support scientific
instruments.
The pallet next flew in Atlantis' payload bay as part of
the 1992 STS-45 Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS-1)
mission. Again dedicated to science equipment, the SLP held equipment from the
US, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Japan.
MD002's third and current fourth flight shared
similarities. Both launched on Endeavour and both were destined for the ISS. On
the earlier flight, STS-100 in 2001, the pallet supported the launch and
deployment of Canadarm2, the station's robotic arm. The Dextre robot flown on
STS-123 connects to the arm and is used together when servicing the outpost.
When Endeavour lands next week, MD002 will have been in
space for more than 45 days over the course of its four flights.
Mission mementos
To mark their own milestones in space and to thank those
who, like the pallet, lent support to their flight, the seven
crew members who launched on Endeavour had their own small 'pallet' of
mission mementos packed on the shuttle.
The astronauts have items for individuals in their
personal preference kits and items for organizations in their Official Flight
Kit (OFK).
"I think different individuals have some school
mementos and flags and banners that are always great to take," said
STS-123 commander Dom Gorie in a pre-flight interview. He and his crew spoke
with collectSPACE.com about the items they chose to fly for others.
"I like astronomy and I have a good friend who
manages the Keck Telescope. I asked her if there was anything I could fly for
the Keck and she came up with a drive lock," shared mission specialist Rick
Linnehan about one of his mementos. The eight- by one-inch silver drive motor
is a spare from the Hawaiian observatory.
Linnehan, who led the mission's first
three spacewalks, is also carrying a lapel pin with pictures of the first
American astronaut Alan Shepard. "That was from the Alan Shepard museum in
New Hampshire in Concord, where I grew up. They asked me to fly that as they
are opening up an Alan Shepard Center [at] the Christa McAuliffe
planetarium," he said.
Bob Behnken, who made his first spacewalk with Linnehan
on Monday night, is carrying wedding rings.
"I have some other people's wedding rings that are
not mine. I think in one case we have to get them back before the actual
wedding. They have to come back on our flight, they can't stay with the station
crew," said Behnken, who is also flying a pair for his fiancee and him.
Another first time spacewalker during this mission, Mike
Foreman has a "green and blue polka dot stuffed giraffe" on behalf of
the Memorial Hermann Children's Hospital in Houston, Texas. "My wife
actually works with the hospital and they had asked her about whether I was
agreeable to take an item."
Pilot Greg "Box" Johnson is flying an item for
a friend who once fought for Earth's independence from aliens.
"We've corresponded and become pretty decent friends," Johnson said
of actor Bill
Pullman, whose roles included portraying the President of the United
States in the 1996 blockbuster "Independence Day."
"I am flying the front page of the playbill of his
'Expedition 6' play that he wrote," said Johnson, referring to Pullman's
theatrical adaptation of an earlier mission aboard the ISS. "I tried to
fly the whole book but they didn't let me take it."
For Pullman, who spoke to collectSPACE at the launch of
Endeavour in Florida, one page was more than enough.
"When he first said 'Is there something you'd want
me to fly?' I thought, 'Wow, I didn't want to take up any space at all. I mean
there's got to be more important things than anything I'd want to do,"
explained Pullman. "And then I thought the fact that the play represented
a kind of a door for so many people that were working on the play that never
really knew much about the space program or all the stories and the people and
the culture, so I thought well, if I could get the title page there, maybe I
will," he recalled.
Continue reading to
learn about the boomerang, boxers and baseball memorabilia aboard Endeavour and
the International Space Station.
Copyright 2008 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
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