While NASA's
next astronaut crew prepares to launch spaceward aboard the space
shuttle Discovery later this year, engineers and technicians are packing the
mission’s crucial cargo of fresh supplies and science equipment.
As part of
NASA’s first return to flight mission, Discovery’s STS-114
spaceflight is bound for the International Space Station (ISS) to deliver food,
tools and replacement parts that can’t be shipped to the orbital
laboratory any other way.
NASA
engineers are filling the Raffaello multi-purpose
logistics module (MPLM) – a sort of high-tech shipping container for
space station supplies – with cargo to be used by Expedition
11 crewmembers Sergei Krikalev
and John Phillips, who will be serving aboard the ISS when Discovery arrives.
“It’s a fairly light load for an MPLM because of
all the other things we’re flying on the mission,” said
NASA’s Scott Higginbotham, ISS mission manager for the STS-114 mission.
To enhance Discovery’s safety, shuttle engineers have
equipped the orbiter with a 50-foot (15-meter) boom
to extend the reach of its shuttle arm, and a number of sensors
to track impacts along its wing leading edges.
“We’re [also] taking up a lot
of tools and equipment in the mid-deck,” said veteran astronaut Eileen
Collins, STS-114 commander, during an orbiter check-out earlier this year.
Collins
said Discovery will also carry enough food and other supplies to support
its crewmembers for a “period of time” aboard the ISS in the remote
chance the orbiter suffer severe damage.
Discovery’s
STS-114 mission is currently set to launch no earlier than May 15 this year. It
is slated to be the first shuttle launch since the Feb. 1, 2003 loss of
Columbia and its crew. Since that accident, the ISS has depended on Russian Progress
cargo ships for vital supply shipments.
Packing Raffaello
Built by
the Italian Space Agency, Raffaello is one of four
cargo modules designed to ferry cargo to the ISS aboard space shuttles. Each
module is designed to hold 16 racks of cargo and fits inside the
shuttle’s payload bay where it can be attached to the ISS, then emptied
from the inside.
Higginbotham
said Raffaello will only carry 12 racks of supplies totalling about 2,600 pounds (1,170 kilograms) when
Discovery launches toward the ISS.
But tucked
inside the module will be the Human Research Facility rack 2 (HRF-2), a science
station designed to boost biomedical research capabilities of the ISS. The
HRF-2 rack, which was packed into Raffaello earlier
this week, will be installed inside the station’s U.S.-built Destiny
laboratory.
“For
me, one of the high points is the internal build up of the space station with
new laboratory equipment,” said Phillips, ISS Expedition 11 flight
engineer, during an interview.
ISS gyros and platforms
Discovery’s
crew will deliver one major piece of hardware that has been long-awaited by
astronauts and managers working with the International Space Station.
A 620-pound
(281-kilogram) device called a control moment gyroscope (CMG) will ride up
aboard Discovery to be installed at the ISS during a spacewalk. The gyroscope
will replace a failed component and help keep the space station oriented
properly. STS-114 spacewalkers Soichi Noguchi and
Stephen Robinson will install the CMG during the second spacewalk of their
mission.
During their
third extravehicular activity (EVA), the two astronauts will attach a
1,522-pound (690-kilogram) platform to the exterior of the space
station’s Quest airlock to hold on-orbit spare parts that will arrive
aboard the next two shuttle flights, NASA officials said.
More space for the space station
While the Raffaello cargo will only be partially full at liftoff, the
STS-114 crew will spare no space loading it up for the return to Earth.
“We’re
bringing back a lot of Russian hardware that is used for automated
docking,” Higginbotham said. “There are a lot of U.S. items that we
want to bring back either to repair and reuse again or to analyze and
understand why they failed. “
Higginbotham
said the cargo module will be stuffed with 5,200 pounds (2,358 kilograms) of
broken or unused equipment, dirty clothes and other material that is currently
clogging up space aboard the ISS.
NASA
astronaut Michael Fincke, who served aboard the ISS
for six months during Expedition 9 mission, said returning the shuttle fleet to
flight is critical for the U.S. to regain its space self-sufficiency.
“The
space station is just full of things waiting to come back down to the
planet,” he told SPACE.com.
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