America's last crew of shuttle astronauts is onboard the International Space Station today after a high-flying final shuttle arrival at the outpost.Hatches between the linked craft opened at 12:47 p.m., and the four shuttle astronauts joined six members of the 28th expedition to the station shortly thereafter.
Atlantis mission commander Chris Ferguson crossed the threshold into the U.S. Harmony module followed by the rest of his crew: pilot Doug Hurley, mission specialist Sandra Magnus and mission specialist Rex Walheim. There to greet them were U.S. astronauts Mike Fossum and Ron Garan along with Russian cosmonauts Andrey Borisenko, Alexander Samokutyaev and Sergei Volkov.
Magnus, who spent four-and-a-half months on the station in late 2008 and early 2009 said the outpost looked like home, only bigger.
Borisenko, the outpost's current commander, briefed the shuttle crew on emergency procedures aboard the outpost. The safety briefing is standard for all arriving crews.
Then one by one, the astronauts and cosmonauts floated out of the Harmony module and into the rest of the sprawling outpost for a tour of the entire station.
The Atlantis astronauts have one more significant chore today -- grappling the station's 57.5-foot robot arm with the shuttle's robot arm. The two together will be used to pull a cylindrical cargo carrier of out the shuttle's payload bay and berth it to a port on the Harmony module. Much of the mission will involve unpacking the supply-laden module and then packing it back up with trash, surplus station gear and science experiments for the ride back to Earth later this month.
1 comment:
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the ISS was a three-beds-only space-hotel, while, now, after its upgrade, the ISS is a six-bed-only space-hotel (a total of 12 astronauts per year with crew rotation) but, since it's an INTERNATIONAL space-hotel, two of these astronauts (four per year) are european, two (four per year) russian and ONLY two (four per year) american
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well, the FOUR european and russian astronauts (eight per year) always will use the Soyuz to fly to/from the ISS, since it's a ready available, cheap and very reliable spacecraft
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of course, the TWO american astronauts (four per year) will fly on Soyuz capsules from late 2011 to 2017 and the MPCV-Orion from 2018 to 2020, when the ISS should be de-orbited and burned in the atmosphere
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so, the total number of american astronauts that will fly to the ISS should be around 9*4+2=38 but ONLY if each astronaut will fly ONCE
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clearly, it's not rational to train an astronaut to fly only ONCE, then, each astronaut should fly at least four times in 2012-2020, reducing the total number of NASA astronauts (with some backup astronauts) to ONLY 10-15 between 2011 and 2020
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and, of course, since the ISS is an "hotel for six" and ONLY TWO of them can be americans, ALL these 10-15 astronaut will fly to the ISS with Soyuz and Orion
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so, when one or more of the "american Soyuz capsules" called "Dragon" or "Blue Kliper" or "CST-pollo" and "Dream(only)chaser" (that "should" fly with crews around 2016-2018) will be available, should NOT have a MARKET, since the ISS does NOT have enough "beds & breakfast" ALSO for the "commercial astronauts"
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Shuttle era: 30 years (1981-2011) 135 missions, 900+ astronauts, 2000 tons of (high value & resupply) cargo to LEO (+ the astronauts and cargo launched with Soyuz and Progress)
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Soyuz+Orion era: only 9 years (2011-2020) about 20 crew missions, 38 american astronauts, about 100 tons of cargo-resupply-only carried with Progress, ATV, HTV, Dragon and Cygnus
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"commercial spacecrafts" era: it may happen only after 2016 and only for cargo, while, the crew missions may never happen in this decade, since... 1. the Soyuz and Orion missions will be more than enough for the ISS and... 2. after 2020, the ISS should no longer exist, so, ZERO places to go = ZERO manned and cargo missions
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