Endeavor on the launch pad

The next flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavor to the International Space Station on March 11 will indeed be a truly international Endeavour.

The next flight of the space shuttle Endeavor to the International Space Station on March 11th will indeed be a truly international Endeavour.

"This is the first flight where all partners will be present," says Dana Weigel, the station's chief aviation officer. "It's not just a 'Japanese flight' or a 'Canadian flight.' This flight will definitely be the first time that each partner will be required to take an active part in making everything work. I think this is a huge milestone."

At the top of the list of milestones is the delivery of part of the Japanese Space Agency's module that will mark the beginning of the agency's presence on the station. The Japanese experimental logistics module, the regulated part - called JLP (Japanese Logistics - Pressurized) - is just the warm-up appearance for the Japanese space agency. It will contain critical control systems and will be used as storage space for research materials. It is 4.4 meters long and 3.9 meters wide - it is the smaller of the two regulated modules planned. Combined with other parts, they created Kibo, the Japanese enclosure of the ferry, named after the Japanese word for "hope". The main facility in Kibo and its robotic arm are planned for launch on the next shuttle flight, and a sort of "front porch" that will allow astronauts to conduct experiments directly in space will be sent later. But even if it is small, what the module represents is big.

"Many people have worked for many years to get to this point," says Takao Doi, mission specialist and astronaut at the Japanese Space Agency. "Through this mission, the real Japanese manned space program can begin."

Doi will be the first person to enter the module, which will be installed in the zenith part, i.e. the top, of the harmony dome that was installed last year. He says he is already thinking about how he will kill that moment. His commander, Dominic Gori, says he is already expecting to hear about it.

"This is going to be the most exciting and rewarding part of the flight," says Gori. "Seeing Taku's face, knowing that he's a Japanese space agency astronaut, bringing in the first piece of their hardware, is going to be an exciting thing."

But all that excitement will come early in the mission. On the first spacewalk, mission specialists Rick Linehan and Garrett Reisman went outside to prepare the module for installation, and Doi will install the module from the inside using the shuttle's robotic arm. "It's going to be kind of a record at first, but we'll finish this mission by the fourth day of the flight," says Mike Moses, the shuttle's chief flight officer. "We'll still have 12 days left."

Twelve days – plus four more spacewalks – is more than some missions get for the entire mission. This flight is the first in the mission planned to fully utilize the power transmission system between the station and the shuttle. Other flights of the shuttle could use the system in order to collect additional electricity from the station and extend the flight, but the decision to do so was usually made only after the shuttle had already entered satellite orbit.

Endeavor is launched into space with the expectation of remaining there for 16 days, and there are always extra days reserved in case weather or technical problems follow the landing.

"We have the possibility of being in satellite orbit for a long time," says Moses. "When we built the schedule, we talked about the 14th day—this is usually the day of landing. For me, it's a day when I leave the dock. My teams will say, 'What? Are we still in satellite orbit?'"

After the Japanese space agency's module is installed, the team's attention - at least as far as spacewalking is concerned - will turn to the Canadian space agency's newest contribution, the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator. The robot, whose name as chosen in a Canadian competition to choose the name is Dextre, together with the two small robotic arms will connect to the Canadian-made robotic arm of the station, and will allow the astronauts to replace hardware outside the station, without going into space.

It's a complex piece of hardware, and because it will ship in several separate pieces, some assembly will be necessary.

"It's going to take a number of spacewalks to put this thing together," Gori said. "It's like a piece of a Lego project - but much more complex than what we were used to as children."

Dextra will be launched as two hands, two operators will control the wrists, and a main body is attached to the platform. The crew will take the platform out of the trunk and attach it to the station. So, after the work related to the Japanese Experimental Logistics Module is completed in the early part of the first spacewalk, Linehan and Reisman will spend the remainder of the spacewalk at the beginning of the Dextra train. The entire second spacewalk and part of the third will be dedicated to completing the assembly.

"It's funny - we're mission 1 J/A, for a Japanese/American," Moses said. "But there should also be a C in our name (Canada). If you look at the mission, Dextra takes the biggest chunk of spacewalk time. Literally, from the day of docking until the day of the 9th flight, we do something with Dextra almost every day.”

The last two spacewalks will come on flight days 11 and 13. The fourth spacewalk will be used to replace the remote power control module and test the shingle repair material on the shuttle. The test of the repair material was originally scheduled for the shuttle Discovery mission last October, but was rescheduled to address problems with the station's solar arrays. The goal is to complete the test before the shuttle Atlantis flies to the Hubble Space Telescope in August, in case heat shields need to be repaired on that mission. Unlike missions to the space station, Atlantis crew members will not be able to wait on the station for a new shuttle to take them home if Atlantis is damaged.

And on the fifth spacewalk, mission specialists Robert L. Behnken and Mike Furman will store the manor on the station that connects to the shuttle's robotic arm to test heat shields. The manor will be stored on the station because the next shuttle flight will not have enough space to carry both the manor and the larger JSA module in the shuttle's cargo hold.

Gori and the pilot Gregory H. Johnson will perform the Endeavor inspection on the 12th before the beacon is stored, instead of after the shuttle leaves the dock as is normally done. This is just one of many robotic arm tasks that await the crew inside the station when no one is out on a spacewalk. Out of the 16 days that Endeavor will be in space, robotic work is planned for 12 - in addition to the interior work required to equip the Japanese experimental logistics module and the equipment work required for Columbus, the European laboratory that will then be in space for only a few weeks. In addition, Reisman will have to make a transition - he will remain on the station after the shuttle leaves, switching places with the astronaut Leopold Eichers of the European Space Agency.

Still, everyone agrees that the hard work will be worth it.

"Everyone is incredibly excited," Moses said. "Their hardware has been ready for release for years, and finally we will be able to launch it. Everyone says, 'Wow, you have a busy task, .. and thank you very much.'"

* Yitzhak Sapir also participated in the preparation of the article