CAPE CANAVERAL - It's relatively small. It's boxy.
It's the least impressive of the girders that make up the metallic backbone of
the International
Space Station, which ultimately will stretch the length of a football field
in orbit.
But the prime payload for
NASA's next station construction mission is considered vital to the agency's
plans to complete assembly of the outpost before a September 2010 deadline set
by President Bush.
"It's critical because
without it, we can't continue the building of the space station," Chuck
Hardison, site manager for The Boeing Co. at Kennedy Space Center, said Friday.
"So important things come in small packages."
Set for launch aboard shuttle Discovery around Dec. 7,
the so-called P-5 Short Spacer [image]
will serve as a bridge between segments on the left side of the station's
11-piece central truss.
It's 11 feet long , 14 feet
wide and 14 feet tall -- or about one-quarter of the size of the massive
truss segment erected at the outpost by a station
construction crew in September.
Relatively small at 4,110
pounds, the segment is 15 tons lighter than the most recently added girder.
But without it, there would
be no way to route electrical power, computer commands and coolant between
portside segments of truss, which provides an orbital foundation for outpost
science labs, solar wings, radiators and spare parts platforms, among other
things.
The February 2003 Columbia accident brought station construction to a halt about midway through the job.
Assembly resumed last month with the delivery and installation of the new
portside truss segment.
NASA plans to launch an
additional 14 shuttle missions to complete
construction. The upcoming flight -- and three after it -- primarily aimed
at finishing enough of the truss to add long-awaited European and Japanese
science labs to the outpost.
"This mission is a
bridge to our future assembly operations," said NASA payload manager
Deborah Hahn. "Hopefully, this will be continued success with the
assembly."
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