NASA’s challenge - cooperation by Aggies and Horns

Through its international space station, NASA has succeeded in getting six countries, including the United States and Russia, to cooperate in space.

But it faces a task of perhaps still greater diplomatic ambitions with the expected launch of space shuttle Endeavour Saturday at 6:17 a.m. Houston time — getting Texas Longhorns and Texas Aggies to work together.

In addition to ferrying half of a large Japanese laboratory to the space station, Endeavour will carry two tiny satellites, one built by engineers at the University of Texas and the other by engineers at Texas A&M University.

Each satellite is a bit larger than a Rubik’s cube and weighs about 7 pounds. The “picosatellites” will launch into space as one unit.

First step, on a shoestring

To be successful, the Long­- horn and Aggie satellites — BEVO-1 and AggieSat2 — first must separate from one another in space and then, using a new NASA-developed global positioning system receiver dubbed a DragonSat, report their locations to Earth-based scientists.

It’s a tentative first step on what engineers hope will be a four-flight, eight-year arc to the point where two tiny satellites can communicate in space and, without ground-based control, maneuver and dock with one another.

“Only a very short time ago the design, launch, and operations of a spacecraft belonged solely to governments and large companies… ,” said Robert Bishop, chairman of aerospace engineering at UT-Austin. “Now this can be accomplished at a university, albeit at a smaller scale, where students can experience the wonder of engineering while contributing in a meaningful manner to space exploration.”

Each school built its satellite with an annual budget of just $75,000, said Dave Kanipe, chief of NASA’s aeroscience and flight mechanics division.

The picosatellite experiment will come after the Endeavour undocks from the space station at the end of a 16-day mission that will feature five spacewalks to deliver and install the second half of the Kibo laboratory.

Station to set a record

The piece, built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will provide a “front porch” for the space station where astronauts aboard will be able to do experiments in an environment exposed to the ravages of outer space.

During an earlier shuttle mission, astronauts installed the pressurized section of the Kibo laboratory, from which experiments can be positioned with a robotic arm.

NASA managers said installing second half of the Kibo module will be a difficult task for Endeavour’s seven-member crew.

“I’ve done an awful lot of these flights, and without a doubt this is one of the most interactively complex flights I’ve ever seen put together,” said Paul Dye, shuttle flight director on the mission.

Endeavour’s commander, Mark Polansky, said his crew is looking forward to Saturday’s launch, but knows there will be a lot of work to accomplish.

“It’s a combination of a sprint and a marathon because it’s a long, long mission,” Polansky said.

When the shuttle docks with the space station its crew will join six — instead of the traditional three — astronauts already aboard. Last month, NASA reached a milestone by doubling the station’s crew complement, and therefore its capacity to conduct scientific experiments.

With the shuttle crew aboard, the station will house 13 humans together in space at one time — a record.

Endeavour will also deliver Texas native Timothy Kopra to the station as a flight engineer and science officer, and return Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata to Earth.