Shuttle To Carry Russian Gear
Jan 12, 2009
By Frank Morring, Jr.
The last scheduled flight of the space shuttle Discovery will carry a pressurized Russian module to help set up the International Space Station (ISS) for operations without NASA's fleet of reusable orbiters.
Planning for the flight, which probably will include Russian use of a commercial facility at Cape Canaveral to prepare the module for launch, comes as station managers start preparing to support a six-person crew on the ISS solely with Russian, European, Japanese and commercial spacecraft.
Mike Suffredini, the U.S. agency's space station program manager, said Jan. 9 that Russian aerospace giant RSC Energia is on track to deliver the Mini Research Module (MRM1) that will be docked to the nadir port on the Russian-side Zarya module.
Set for launch on April 8, 2010, on the STS-132/ULF4 station-logistics mission, the 8-ton module will be equipped with the trunnions needed to hold it steady in the aft portion of Discovery's payload bay during ascent, and stuffed with 1.4 tons of pressurized cargo for the U.S. side of the ISS.
It also will carry some hardware for a much larger Russian laboratory module tentatively planned for launch on a Proton rocket in 2012. When it is attached with the station's robotic arm, the seven-meter-long MRM1 will provide the clearance that will be needed for Russian Soyuz and Progress vehicles to dock with Zarya after the new Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module is in place.
"We decided to do that to make sure we'd have access to four [docking] ports," Suffredini said. "We need four ports when we're flying three Soyuzes to ISS; three Soyuzes attached to ISS at one time is what we're going to do with a six-person crew."
The station crew is scheduled to double to six members in May, which means two of the three-seat Soyuz vehicles must be docked to the station at all times as rescue vehicles in case an emergency forces the crew to evacuate. A third port is needed to handle the changeover when fresh Soyuzes arrive every six months, and a fourth will accommodate the unpiloted Russian Progress vehicles and European Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATVs) that will help carry the increased logistics load to the station after the shuttle fleet retires in 2010.
The MRM1 will join another mini-research module - designated MRM2 - that is scheduled to be launched in August like a Progress vehicle and dock autonomously with the station at the zenith port on the Russian Zvezda service module, giving that port a new capability to handle Soyuz and Progress vehicles.
The Russian launch plans point toward the station's final configuration, which has been a moving target at both ends of the orbiting facility. NASA originally planned to dock the third pressurized node to the nadir side of the Unity pressurized node, which also would have required the docking-port clearance afforded by MRM1.
But Node 3 is now set to be attached to the port side of Unity on STS-130 in December, so the MRM1 clearance won't be needed until Russia's new lab arrives.
To prepare MRM1 for flight from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., Energia has signed an agreement in principle with Spacehab Inc. to use the U.S. company's facilities at Cape Canaveral for processing. Although no longer needed for Spacehab's pressurized shuttle-bay modules, the facilities just outside KSC have been maintained as a hedge against possible extension of shuttle operations past 2010, and so will be available for Energia.
The Russian company will deliver the MRM1 to the shuttle landing strip at KSC in an Antonov 124 cargo plane, and use Spacehab equipment to move it to the processing facility, and then on to KSC for installation in a shuttle payload canister for delivery to Discovery at the pad, according to Mike Johnson, Spacehab vice president/advanced programs.
Discovery photo: NASA
