NASA shuttle Endeavour, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, delivers the final components of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory to the station. The platform will serve as a front porch for experiments that require direct exposure to space. Expedition 19, STS-127, will double the size of the resident crew on the complex, expanding it to six people. The ESA representative is Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne.
Experiments in Kibo will focus on space medicine, biology, Earth observations, material production, biotechnology and communications research. The Space Station Operations Facility in Japan will operate Kibo experiments and systems from its Mission Control Room near Tokyo.
NASA astronaut Mark L. Polansky is commander. Other mission members are Marine Corps Lt. Col. Douglas G. Hurley, the pilot; and mission specialists Navy Lt. Cmdr. Christopher J. Cassidy, Thomas H. Marshburn, David A. Wolf and Julie Payette, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut.
The mission will deliver Army Col. Timothy L. Kopra to the station to join Expedition 18 as a flight engineer and science officer and return Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata to Earth. Hurley, Cassidy, Marshburn and Kopra will be making their first trips to space. UPDATED May/09 to reflect change of launch date from May to June.
RELATED READING:
Kibo (NASA)
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/jem.html
0 comments:
Post a Comment