Russia launches long-delayed lab module to house station
A heavy-lift Proton rocket roared to life and blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Wednesday, sending a long-delayed 44,000-pound laboratory module into orbit for an eight-day flight to the Worldwide Area Station.
The towering Proton, essentially the most highly effective rocket within the Russian stock, took off at 10:58 a.m. EDT (7:58 p.m. native time), shortly climbing away from the sprawling cosmodrome atop a protracted jet of flaming exhaust.
9 minutes and 40 seconds later, the unpiloted Nauka module, also called the multi-purpose laboratory module, or MLM, separated from the Proton’s higher stage, deployed its photo voltaic arrays and set off after the house station.
The journey will take eight days, giving engineers and flight controllers time to take a look at and check the brand new module in house and to clear a docking port on the house station to make means for the lab’s arrival.
Russian flight controllers should first detach the two-decades-old Pirs docking and airlock compartment at present related to a port on the Earth-facing aspect of the station’s aft Zvezda module.
The Progress MS-16/77P cargo ship, launched to the station in February, is now docked to Pirs. On Friday, at 9:15 a.m., the Progress will again away, pulling the Pirs module away with it.
Three hours later, the cargo ship’s thrusters will fireplace to drop each spacecraft into the environment the place they are going to each dissipate. The maneuver is timed to make sure any particles that survives the warmth of re-entry will fall harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean.
Following the removing of Pirs, NASA’s Canadian-built robotic arm will perform an in depth photograph inspection of the vacated Zvezda docking port to verify no particles is current which may forestall an hermetic seal with Nauka arrives.
Assuming no issues are discovered with Nauka or the docking port, the lab module will full its rendezvous with the house station subsequent Thursday, shifting in for docking at Zvezda’s Earth-facing port at 8:25 a.m. on July 29.
It is going to take as much as 11 Russian spacewalks over about seven months to electrically join and outfit the brand new lab module, offering a brand new airlock, analysis house, residing quarters, a European Area Company robotic arm and different methods.
Nauka’s docking will come the day earlier than a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket launches a Boeing CST-100 Starliner crew capsule to the station in an unpiloted check flight.
The Starliner, like SpaceX’s already operational Crew Dragon spacecraft, is designed to ferry U.S. and partner-agency astronauts to and from the house station on a business foundation.
An preliminary Starliner check flight in December 2019 had main software program issues, prompting Boeing to launch a second unpiloted check flight earlier than the ship’s first deliberate launch with a crew on board late this yr.
For the check flight, the Starliner will dock on the entrance finish of the station’s ahead Concord module.
To make means for the Boeing capsule, 4 station astronauts — Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, Thomas Pesquet and Akihiko Hoshide — boarded their Crew Dragon early Wednesday, undocked from the ahead port, looped up above the station and re-docked at Concord’s space-facing port.
If all goes properly, the Starliner capsule will blast off from the Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station atop its Atlas 5 rocket at 2:53 p.m. July 30 and dock at Concord’s vacated ahead port at 3:06 p.m. the following day.
The spacecraft will stay hooked up till Auguar 5 when it should undock, drop out of orbit and descend to a parachute-assisted landing at White Sands, New Mexico.
Whereas the Starliner flight retains U.S. flight controllers busy, the Russians shall be targeted on the newly arrived Nauka module.
The module is much like the Russian-built NASA-financed Zarya module, or FGB, that connects Zvezda to the U.S. phase of the station. The FGB-2 initially was meant as a backup for Zvezda however development was stopped within the Nineties.
Roscosmos then determined to transform the unfinished module into the MLM configuration within the early 2000s, however launch was repeatedly delayed by a wide range of technical points.
As soon as hooked up and outfitted, the MLM/Nauka module will present a crew airlock, an experiment airlock, analysis services, one other oxygen generator, a brand new bathroom, expanded residing quarters and the European robotic arm, or ERA.
The module is supplied with its personal photo voltaic arrays, thrusters and an unbiased steerage and navigation system to assist orient the station as wanted.
Throughout its preliminary outfitting, Russian cosmonauts will plug the module into NASA-supplied energy through the first in a collection of spacewalks. Electrical and information traces shall be related, docking methods attached, set up of a heat-rejecting radiator, airlock and robotic arm preps and set up of particles shields.
