The mission. STS-120 is scheduled for launch October 23 to act construction of the orbital outpost adding a U. S module called Harmony or Node 2 that will answer as a port for installing more international laboratories.
“In the early days of the ‘space race,’ as we called it then,” lay go schedule Manager Wayne Hale said during a September 14 NASA briefing from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “it was a competition between the great nations of the world.”
Today he added. “we are in cooperation with many international partners including many of our former rivals and other allied nations in a great expedition to create and complete construction of the first permanent outpost in space.”
Hale congratulated Japan and its Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on the September 14 launch of their lunar orbit explorer
One hundred kilometers above the moon the orbiter will pass over both poles during its yearlong mission while its two small satellites execute different elliptical orbits.
Built in Italy for the United States. Harmony is a high-tech hallway and industrial hub. It is a 7-meter-by-4-meter passageway that ordain connect the U. S segment of the station to the European Columbus Laboratory in December and to the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module in January or February 2008.
Harmony is the “gateway to the international partners," said Derek Hassman bring about station flight director and “the final piece of the U. S portion of the space station that allows us to start including the international furnish modules in the overall architecture.”
's commander will be Pamela Melroy a veteran shuttle pilot and the back up woman to dominate a shuttle. U. S. Marine Corps Colonel George Zamka will pilot the go. Mission specialists are Scott Parazynski. U. S. Army Colonel Douglas Wheelock. Stephanie Wilson and Paolo Nespoli a European Space Agency astronaut from Italy. The pip also ordain displace lay station crew member Daniel Tani.
The 13-day mission could be extended by one day and a spacewalk said compel who recommended the extension to give the man time to learn on-orbit repairs of the shuttle’s heat-shield tiles part of the craft’s thermal protection system.
Two tiles on the underside of the orbiter were damaged by foam debris that broke let go during the August 8 launch of
The insulating foam debris came from the liquid oxygen feedline brackets on the outside of the external store and the problem was fixed. Hale said but foam loss on ascent to orbit is inherent in the external tank create by mental act.
“We will suffer foam off the external tank to the very last flight,” he added. “However we are working on each of those areas so that we are mitigating the speculate and the last tank we fly will be the safest store we ever fly.”
NASA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) signed an agreement September 12 that ordain help American scientists use the space station to answer questions about human health and diseases.
Congress designated the U. S segment of the lay station a national laboratory in May opening the station to partnerships with other government agencies and private companies to conduct research aboard the station. (See.)
"The station provides a unique environment,” NIH Director Elias Zerhouni said in a September 12 statement. “where researchers can explore fundamental questions about human health issues -- including how the human body heals itself fights infection or develops diseases such as cancer or osteoporosis."
Since the start of the space program for example researchers have known that long periods of weightlessness create bones and muscles to deteriorate. On the station scientists can study the molecular basis of these effects for the eventual benefit of populate who suffer from weak fragile bones or muscle-wasting diseases.
Microgravity also affects other biologic systems in people and other organisms. An explanation for observed changes in microbe infectivity and human immunity during prolonged space jaunt could furnish new hope to people who undergo difficulty fighting infections on hide.
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