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20 February 2008
Atlantis Home as Shuttle Endeavour Prepares for March 11 Launch
STS-123 will deliver part of Japan’s laboratory, Canada’s two-armed robot
Washington -- Atlantis touched down on runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center February 20, after a 12-day mission that delivered to the international space station and installed the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Columbus laboratory, and set the stage for the next series of launches in the United States and Europe.
The shuttle punched through high clouds into a sunny Florida morning, “wrapping up a 5.3-million-mile [8.5-million-kilometer] mission to expand the global village of space,” mission control announced after the shuttle’s nose gear touchdown.
The next launch will be March 8, when the new ESA automated transfer vehicle, Jules Verne, is scheduled to launch from ESA’s spaceport in French Guiana and stay in orbit until August 9.
On March 11, Endeavour begins a 16-day mission to the space station, and on May 25, Discovery heads to the space station carrying a major component of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA’s) Experiment Module.
“It feels really good to be having missions back to back like this again,” NASA Space Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach said during a post-landing briefing February 20.
The seven-member STS-122 crew began its mission February 7 and arrived at the station two days later. Crew members added ESA’s laboratory to the station, increasing the orbital outpost’s scientific capabilities.
The crew also delivered ESA astronaut Leopold Eyharts to the space station to join Expedition 16, and replaced an empty nitrogen tank on the station’s backbone. Mission specialists Rex Walheim, Hans Schlegel and Stanley Love conducted three spacewalks to install and prepare the Columbus module and replace the nitrogen tank.
Eyharts traded places with NASA astronaut Daniel Tani, who returned to Earth aboard Atlantis after 120 days on the station.
Atlantis’s return to Earth happened to occur on the 45th anniversary of astronaut John Glenn’s four-hour space flight in Friendship 7 as the United States’ first man in orbit in 1962.
In contrast to that flight, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations Bill Gerstenmaier said, “we’re now learning how to operate in space and learning how to operate internationally, and I think this is our future. We’ll next move from a low-Earth-orbiting platform to something on the moon and then Mars, and we’re going to do it with the same tools that we’ve generated and learned here on space station.”
MARCH MISSION
Endeavour arrived at the Kennedy Space Center launch pad February 18 for a series of tests -- including a full launch dress rehearsal, called the terminal countdown demonstration test, scheduled for February 23-25 -- in advance of its scheduled March 11 launch and 16-day mission to the space station.
The shuttle's seven crew members will deliver the first section of the JAXA Kibo laboratory and the Canadian Space Agency's two-armed robotic system, Dextre. Shuttle and station crew members will conduct five spacewalks during the mission.
Dominic Gorie will command the STS-123 mission and Gregory Johnson will be the pilot. Other crew members are Robert Behnken, Mike Foreman, Rick Linnehan, Garrett Reisman and JAXA astronaut Takao Doi.
Reisman will stay on the station as part of Expedition 16. He replaces Eyharts, who will return to Earth on Endeavour after a relatively short stay on the station to make sure the initial Columbus systems are working and that scientists on Earth can receive data from the lab.
JAPAN’S “HOPE”
The Japanese Experiment Module is called Kibo, the Japanese word for “hope.” Japan's first human space facility will enhance the station’s research capabilities through experiments that focus on space medicine, biology, Earth observations, material production, biotechnology and communications research.
Scientists and engineers will operate Kibo experiments and systems from a mission control room at the Space Station Operations Facility at Tsukuba Space Center in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, just north of Tokyo.
NASA must integrate the Kibo control room operations with its own flight control room in Houston, and with flight control rooms in Russia and in Europe for the Columbus lab.
“When we activated the Columbus module it was a tremendous learning experience for the Columbus Control Center,” Gerstenmaier said.
“The plans are in place, the protocols are in place, the teams know how to send commands and to work with each other,” he added, “but it’s going to be a tremendous learning experience over the next couple of months as they really come together as a team and start working through some inevitable problems that will come up as they work on orbit.”
The Kibo module’s six components include two research facilities -- the pressurized module and the exposed facility -- and a logistics module attached to each, a remote manipulator system and an inter-orbit communication system unit.
Kibo also has a scientific airlock through which experiments are transferred and exposed to the external environment of space. The module’s components will be assembled in space over the course of three space shuttle missions.
The first component to reach the station in March will be the experiment logistics module for the pressurized section. Logistics modules are on-orbit storage areas that house materials for experiments, maintenance tools and supplies.
More information about space exploration is available on the America.gov Web site.
More information about space shuttle and space station missions is available at the NASA Web site.
More information about ESA is available at the agency’s Web portal.
