Skip to navigation | Skip to content

Building in space started

The world's most remote construction site

The world's most remote construction site

The first human construction site in space has been opened. The astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavor, coupled their module Unity to the Russian-built module Zarya. Zarya had been launched 16 days ago from the launch site in Kazakhstan. The coupling is the start of the actual building of the International Space Station.

The coupling was performed by astronaut Nancy Currie who plucked Zarya out of orbit at 5:47pm CST Sunday. After slowly and carefully aligning Zarya's docking mechanism with a comparable mechanism on Unity's Pressurized Mating Adapter-1, Commander Bob Cabana fired Endeavor's downward jets at 8:07pm to drive the two large modules together. Initial attempts to firmly latch Zarya and Unity together while the shuttle's robot arm was attached to Zarya's grapple fixture were unsuccessful. But after Currie ungrappled the module, hooks and latches between Zarya and Unity engaged at 8:48pm, forming a tightly sealed, 35-ton, 76-foot-tall structure rising from Endeavor's payload bay, the size of a seven-story building.

Currie used the robot arm cameras to conduct a detailed survey of Zarya, focusing on two antennas belonging to the Telerobtically Operated Rendezvous System (TORU), which failed to deploy following launch on November 20. Flight controllers concluded that the pyrotechnic pins holding the antennas in place actually fired, but the antennas did not unfurl as planned. The antennas, which are part of a backup navigational aid system, are emitting signal strength in their current position and pose no problem for future station operations. But flight controllers are considering having astronaut Jerry Ross conduct a more thorough survey of the antennas while affixed to the end of the shuttle's robot arm during the first space walk he and Jim Newman will conduct Monday night. Mission managers have not decided whether Ross and Newman will be called upon to manually deploy the antennas on a future space walk.

The first space walk, scheduled to begin about 4:30pm CST yeserday, may begin earlier if Ross and Newman are ready to depressurize Endeavor's external airlock ahead of schedule. During the excursion, Ross and Newman will hook up electrical cables and connectors between Zarya and Unity, enabling power to flow into the US. component for the first time. That will allow Unity's avionics, computers and heaters to be activated to set the stage for the ultimate shifting of command and control, and the origination of the power for the International Space Station from the Russian components to the US components, once the American-built Destiny laboratory is joined to the station in February 2000.

Endeavor and the International Space Station are orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 240 statute miles.

Tags: astronomy-space