The US shuttle Discovery, carrying a Japanese research laboratory and toilet parts, raced toward the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday after a successful launch from Florida.
“A huge day for the space station partnership, for the Japanese space agency, for NASA and, really, for the people who hoped to see the space station do what it was designed to do, to be a place in orbit where we can learn to live and work in space,” NASA administrator Mike Griffin said after Saturday’s spectacular liftoff.
While the launch at Kennedy Space Center was marred by video evidence of several chunks of foam shedding off Discovery’s external fuel tank, a top official of the US space agency said it did not endanger Discovery.
“We saw maybe five pieces of foam break away ... We don’t consider this a big thing,” said Bill Gerstenmeier, NASA associate administrator for space operations.
He brushed off worries that the foam could have caused the kind of damage that led to the Columbia disaster in 2003, when the shuttle disintegrated upon re-entry because of launch-damaged insulation tiles, killing all seven aboard.
“They were late in the ascent,” he said of the foam chunks that came off during the Discovery launch on Saturday.
“They can’t build up enough velocity that they can hit the orbiter” and cause any significant damage, he said.
Discovery carried one Japanese and six US astronauts to deliver the massive pressurized module and a robotic arm for the Japanese Aerospace exploration Agency’s Kibo research unit.
The centerpiece of the 14-day mission is to deliver and install the 11.2m, 14.8-tonne pressurized module of Kibo, which means “hope” in Japanese.
When in place, it will be the largest room on the ISS, with space for four scientists to work.
Another key Kibo unit, its 10m robotic arm, is also being sent up on the shuttle.
Discovery is also carrying up a last-minute load of much-needed parts for the ISS’s Russian toilet, which partially failed this week.
The three astronauts living on the station were forced to use the facilities in the attached Soyuz spacecraft before they could rig up a temporary fix to the toilet, but that fix requires extra manpower and excess water to flush.
The crew will include a replacement astronaut for the ISS, with US robotics specialist Greg Chamitoff stepping in for another American, Garrett Reisman, who will return to Earth after three months at the station.
The astronauts were bid goodnight by mission control in Houston, Texas, at about 11pm on Saturday ahead of a busy day yesterday working on an inspection of the heat shield for damage in the launch, and preparing for docking with the ISS today.
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