07 July 2009
New Six-Person Space Station Crew Represents All Partners
Robot arm to capture new Japanese cargo ship as it flies by in September
Washington — For the first time since 1998, when Russia and the United States launched to orbit the first two segments of the International Space Station, a six-person crew lives and works aboard the orbital outpost, representing all five partner space agencies.
The orbiting laboratory is an international cooperative venture among NASA; Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency; the Canadian Space Agency (CSA); the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA); and the European Space Agency (ESA).
More than 100,000 people in space agencies and contractor facilities in the United States and around the world are involved in the effort.
The space station, 83 percent complete according to NASA, now measures 102 meters. Since the first launch there have been 29 construction flights to the station. After 126 shuttle missions, only eight remain before the fleet is scheduled to retire when the space station is complete in 2010.
“The tremendous technological achievement in orbit is matched only by the cooperation and perseverance of its partners on the ground,” International Space Station Program Manager Mike Suffredini said in a recent statement on the NASA Web site. “We have overcome differences in language, geography and engineering philosophies to succeed.”
PARTNERS CONVERGING
Cosmonaut Roman Romanenko of Roscosmos, astronaut Frank De Winne of ESA and astronaut Robert Thirsk of CSA launched to the station May 27 in a Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Thirsk is the first Canadian to fly on a long-duration space flight.
When the three crew members, designated Expedition 20, docked at the space station May 29, they were welcomed by Expedition 19 — commander Gennady Padalka of Roscosmos and flight engineers Michael Barratt of NASA and Koichi Wakata, the first resident station crew member from JAXA.
Space shuttle Endeavour, scheduled to launch to the station July 11, will deliver NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra to the station along with two components of JAXA’s Kibo Japanese Experiment Module, the exposed facility and the experiment logistics module – exposed section.
The mission will include five spacewalks, and while the shuttle is docked a record 13 crew members will be aboard the space station.
After the 16-day STS-127 shuttle mission, Wakata will return to Earth with the Endeavour crew and Kopra will remain on station as part of Expedition 20 until August, when space shuttle Discovery’s STS-128 mission will deliver NASA astronaut Nicole Stott to the station and return Kopra to Earth.
WORKING IN SPACE
The International Space Station is still in the assembly phase, so much of the crew’s work involves installing, activating and checking out new equipment and facilities. In existing facilities they maintain power, communications, computers and data, life support, thermal control, robotics and research components.
U.S. operating system (USOS) crew members — those from NASA, JAXA, ESA and CSA — maintain USOS systems and conduct USOS research. Russian crew members maintain their segment’s systems and conduct Russian research. European and Japanese crew members operate and maintain their own modules and equipment.
Crew members are fluent in Russian and English. They speak Russian when operating Russian systems in Russian station segments and English when operating U.S. systems in U.S. segments. And all crew members use other languages to improve their technical and cultural understanding.
Duties aboard the station can range from performing a complex repair on a faulty piece of equipment to cleaning the bathroom and taking trash out to an empty Progress resupply vehicle. Crew members share meal preparation and cleanup duties.
EXPEDITION 20
Challenges associated with six crew members involve sharing bathroom facilities; communications with mission control, family and friends; time on the exercise equipment; and the use of e-mail and Internet-protocol phones. Getting everyone together for mealtime may be more difficult and, according to the NASA Web site, “there’s always the problem of who picks the movie for movie night.”
Beginning with Expedition 20, six-person crews will be able to spend three times more time on research than a three-person crew. In three-person crews, USOS crew members spent 11.3 hours per week on research. Six-person USOS crews will spend 35 hours a week on research. When space station construction is complete in 2010, NASA hopes to increase research time to 70 hours per week.
Research projects include:
• Amateur radio on the International Space Station: De Winne conducted an amateur radio session with students at Vrije Basisschool Terbank-Egenhoven in Belgium. With the help of amateur radio clubs and radio operators, astronauts and cosmonauts can speak directly with large groups of the public, showing how amateur radio energizes students about science and learning.
• Bisphosphonates (bone-loss compounds) as a countermeasure to space-flight-induced bone loss: Wakata and Thirsk took a weekly anti-bone-loss pill. The experiment will determine whether such drugs, along with routine in-flight exercise, protect crew members from decreases in bone-mineral density.
• Earth observations: The crew captured early images of the eruption of the Sarychev Peak volcano in the Kuril Islands on June 12.
In September, the space station will experience another first. JAXA’s first unpiloted cargo craft (HTV-1) will launch for the first time from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan and fly close enough to the space station for the Canadarm2 robotic arm to reach out and capture it. The arm will be used to dock the HTV with the Harmony node to deliver 5.4 metric tons of supplies.
The HTV joins the Russian spacecraft Progress and the European automated transfer vehicle as cargo vessels designed to keep the station stocked with critical hardware and supplies.
More information is available at the International Space Station partner Web sites: NASA’s Expedition 20 page, Robert Thirsk's CSA mission page, Frank De Winne's ESA mission page, JAXA’s space station page and the Roscosmos page.
