A new
pressurized module that will serve as a sort of orbital storage closet for
Japan's Kibo laboratory at the International Space Station (ISS) received a
warm welcome Tuesday at NASA's Florida spaceport.
ISS
officials held the welcome ceremony in the Space Station Processing Facility at
NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida to greet the new module,
which will form part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Kibo
laboratory once in orbit.
Known
formally as the Experiment Logistics Module Pressurized Section, the new space
station piece joins Kibo's
Pressurized Module - a 37-foot (11.2-meter) long vessel - at KSC, though a
porch-like external experiment platform is still in Japan, JAXA officials said.
The logistics module will hold equipment and tools for the Kibo laboratory and
first arrived at KSC in mid-March.
The JAXA
logistics module is due to launch towards
the ISS no earlier than February 2008 aboard NASA's space shuttle
Endeavour, to be followed by the longer pressurized laboratory in April. The
multi-component Kibo laboratory - whose name means "Hope" - is also known as
the station's Japan Experiment Module (JEM) and will have its own robotic arm
when complete.
"Now we are
performing launch site operations to check them out," Kichiro Imagawa, JAXA's
JEM development project manager, told SPACE.com Tuesday. "We think it's
very important to complete these tasks in the time remaining before launch."
Imagawa
said Kibo's external platform, which will allow astronauts and scientists to
perform materials experiments by exposing samples to the space environment,
will be delivered to KSC next year.
Japan's
Kibo laboratory is one of several international laboratories awaiting launch
towards the ISS. The European Space Agency's Columbus
laboratory module is due to launch to the station no earlier than Dec. 6 of
this year aboard NASA's shuttle Atlantis.
The Russian
aerospace firm RSC Energia is also constructing a multipurpose research
laboratory for Russia's Federal Space Agency. The new module is slated to
launch towards the ISS atop a Proton rocket at the end of 2008, Russia's Interfax
News Agency reported last week.
Construction
of the ISS is slated to be complete by September 2010, when NASA plans to
retire its aging space shuttle fleet.
advertisement
