The space station’s huge new Japanese lab got even bigger on Friday when the astronauts attached an attic to it for extra storage.
The attic — essentially a 4m shed, or closet, for spare tools and equipment — was popped atop the 11m Kibo science laboratory by astronauts operating the international space station’s robot arm.
“Nice work,” Mission Control radioed.
PHOTO: AFP
Even before the addition, the billion-dollar, bus-size Kibo was the biggest room at the space station.
The attic had been in a temporary location at the space station since March. There wasn’t enough room on a space shuttle to fit both the attic and lab, so NASA split them into two flights. The third and final Japanese section, a porch for outdoor experiments, will be launched next spring.
In an interview with reporters on Friday, shuttle Discovery’s commander, Mark Kelly, said Kibo may not smell like a new car, but “it has a new car feel to it.” Before his flight, he described Kibo as “the Lexus of the space station modules.”
“It’s incredibly big, a lot of room so you have to be a little extra careful. You can get out in the middle of it and you can’t reach a handrail and you could possibly get stuck there for a little while,” Kelly said.
The space station’s commander, Russian Sergei Volkov, said the blue curtain, or Japanese noren, hanging over Kibo’s threshold is a homey touch, and he’ll leave it up for a while.
Discovery’s astronauts delivered and installed Kibo, along with the noren, earlier in the week.
Also flying to the space station aboard Discovery: a new pump for the space station’s broken toilet, which is now fixed, the jerseys of three sports greats and Buzz Lightyear.
Buzz joined the 10 astronauts and cosmonauts for dinner on Thursday night — he was offered borscht — and was seen looking out the window at a pair of spacewalkers and ringing the space station’s bell, by banging into it with his head. The Disney action figure, made famous in the 1995 film Toy Story, flew up on Discovery and moved into the space station for a six-month stay, as part of NASA’s toys-in-space educational program.
The jerseys, on the other hand, were kept tucked away in a shuttle locker.
One of Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France yellow shirts is flying, as well as the backup jersey that New York Giants football player Eli Manning took to the Super Bowl championship in February and the last jersey worn by Craig Biggio in a Houston Astros baseball game.
Kelly assured the AP that the shirts will return to Earth unworn, even though several on his crew are big cycling, football and baseball fans.
The astronauts faced more work with Kibo yesterday. They were to test drive the lab’s 10m robot arm, which will be used once the Japanese research platform, or porch, arrives next spring.
The third and final spacewalk for Discovery’s nine-day space station visit — to replace an empty nitrogen gas tank — will take place today.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS