The International Space Station program achieved a significant milestone today when Nicole Stott, using the station's robotic arm, grappled the first Japanese-built cargo freighter as it floated near the orbiting complex and Robert Thirsk gingerly berthed it to the Earth-facing port of the Harmony connecting module. Today's operation also marked the first time the station's arm has been used to pluck a free-flying object from orbit nearby.
FREE VIDEO: WATCH: HTV IS GRAPPLED BY STATION ARM WATCH: HTV IS BERTHED TO HARMONY MODULE ALL-ACCESS SUBSCRIBERS: DOWNLOAD VIDEO: HTV IS GRAPPLED BY STATION ARM - 640x480 1.2 MBPS VIDEO DOWNLOAD VIDEO: HTV IS BERTHED TO HARMONY MODULE - 640x480 1.2 MBPS VIDEO Launched a week ago, the 33 foot long H-II Transfer Vehicle, HTV, underwent an extensive series of on-orbit testing before making its final approach to the space station today. 14 feet wide, the HTV is nearly as large as the station's own pressurized laboratory modules. Operating autonomously, the craft slowly approached ISS during a carefully choreographed series of rendezvous maneuvers before reaching a point about 30 feet beneath the station. At that point, HTV stopped and maintained attitude while Stott guided the arm toward a grapple fixture on the side of the spacecraft and grab hold of it at 3:47 p.m. EDT. After Stott guided the arm in for a picture-perfect grapple, Thirsk took over to guide HTV to the nadir common berthing mechanism of Harmony and delicately berth it to the complex during a procedure that culminated in a hard mate at 6:26 p.m. EDT. "We are so, so happy to have this beautiful vehicle here with us now and we look very forward to going in tomorrow and finding all the surprises I'm sure you've stowed there for us," Stott said to flight controllers in NASA's Johnson Space Center and at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Tsukuba Space Center. Harmony's hatch leading to the vestibule between HTV and the connecting node was opened at 9:30 p.m. to permit the astronauts to hook up power and data cables so that controllers in Japan could activate HTV in preparation for its hatch opening and ingress Friday. HTV-1 is carring approximately 7,366 pounds of equipment and supplies including 5,475 pounds stored in 8 racks mounted along the four inside walls of the forward pressurized secion. The remainder are loaded in the unpressurized middle section of HTV. The aft section of the spacecraft contains the propulsion and avionics. After the hatch is opened to the pressurized section, the crew will unload the cargo, including 1,890 pounds of food, 1,249 pounds of payloads, 384 pounds of personal items and 215 pounds of computer equipment. Other cargo is located in the unpressurized section of HTV mounted on a pallet which will be extracted from the vehicle by the station's robot arm and handed off to the Kibo laboratory's robot arm. Unlike the other unmanned cargo resupply craft for the space station, the Russian Progress and European ATV, HTV is able to carry unpressurized payloads that can be mounted on the outside of ISS. The Japanese arm will be used to temporarily mount the pallet on the side of the exposed facility section of Kibo. The two payloads attached to the pallet will then be removed and mounted on the exposed facility before the pallet is returned to its bay inside HTV. "The pallet is removed and inserted a lot like a common dresser drawer. It's got wheels along the edges of the pallet and there are guide rails inside the HTV," said NASA flight director Dana Weigel. The first experiment to be unloaded from the pallet will be NASA's 839 pound Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO) and Remote Atmospheric & Ionospheric Detection System (RAIDS) Experiment Payload: HICO and RAIDS Experiment Payload (HREP). HREP combines two experiment sensors into one payload: the Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO) and the Remote Atmospheric and Ionospheric Detection System (RAIDS). HICO demonstrates space-based Maritime Hyper-Spectral Imagery (MHSI) for characterization of littoral regions (the coast of an ocean or sea) on Earth. RAIDS is an ultraviolet (UV) and visible remote sensing instrument that measures limb profiles of electron density and neutral density to improve ionospheric (the upper part of the atmosphere) and satellite drag models. A few hours after HREP is installed next Thursday, Japan's Superconducting Submillimeter-Wave Limb-Emission Sounder (SMILES) payload. SMILES aims at demonstrating a sensitive submillimeter-wave sounder and monitoring global distributions of stratospheric trace gases. SMILES is the first experiment to use a superconductive low-noise receiver with a mechanical 4K refrigerator in space, and it enables global mappings of stratospheric trace gases. The empty pallet will be returned to HTV on Friday. HTV will be loaded with garbage after all the supplies have been removed. Then, about 7 weeks after berthing, HTV will be unberthed from ISS and will use its thrusters to deobrit itself and burn up on re-entry over the southern Pacific Ocean. (The Spacearium / Space Media Corporation)
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