GEORGE DILLER: NASA reached to the West for the European-built
Columbus laboratory, and now it turns to the East for a Japanese-made science module
named Kibo,
that means "Hope." The first Kibo segment, a pressurized logistics module,
along with a Canadian robotics system named Dextre,
will ride into orbit aboard space shuttle Endeavour,
bringing new potential for space research.
Endeavour and its seven-member crew are ready for an international mission,
one that represents the collective space ambition of three nations.
The countdown for the launch of space shuttle Endeavour is under way.
Live from Kennedy Space Center, this is continuing coverage of the countdown to launch
of space shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-123.
ALLARD BEUTEL: Thanks for joining us. I'm your host, Allard Beutel,
news chief here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
We're less than 15 hours away from the launch of space shuttle Endeavour
on the STS-123 mission. Just a few hours ago,
technicians moved away a protective housing
called the rotating service structure from Endeavour as launch preparations move closer
to liftoff on Tuesday, March 11 at 2:28 a.m. Eastern.
This mission is truly an international effort. The International Space Station is about to
"go global" with elements from Russia, Europe, Canada,
the United States and now Japan. Coming up, we'll take a closer look at this 25th shuttle
mission to the station.
And to help us do that, NASA and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Julie Payette will
be here in a moment to discuss the work that awaits the Endeavour's crew members.
But before we begin, let's take a quick look at those seven astronauts.
DILLER: A veteran of three spaceflights, Commander Dom Gorie leads the team
on the 16-day mission.
STS-123 will be the first spaceflight for Pilot Gregory Johnson and Mission Specialists
Bob Behnken, Mike Foreman and Garrett Reisman.
Also a veteran of three spaceflights, Mission Specialist Rick Linnehan has logged more
than 43 days in space.
And Takao Doi carries the hope for Japan as he will be the first to enter the
Japanese Kibo logistics segment.
BEUTEL: Now that we've met the STS-123 crew, let's meet veteran
NASA astronaut Julie Payette, who is scheduled actually to fly on the
STS-127 mission next year.
JULIE PAYETTE: That is correct.
BEUTEL: And thank you for joining us.
JULIE PAYETTE: Thank you.
BEUTEL: So let's get -- what do you have to do, and what is the crew doing right now?
PAYETTE: They're probably about to get up, because they've shifted their days.
We're launching at 2 a.m. in the morning, so they will wake up late in the morning,
have breakfast and then start preparing.
There's a whole suit-up process that goes on that takes quite a while.
They have to put on their suit in this very, very historical room where we suit up in the
crew quarters.
That's the same room where the Apollo astronauts going to the moon put their white
space suits. So it's kind of special for all the astronauts. But that takes a little while.
They have to make sure the suits won't leak. And then they will walk out to the pad hours
before the launch, get strapped in, then await the countdown.
BEUTEL: Well, like you said, you're right, this mission is primarily, for us here in
the
Eastern Time Zone, it's primarily a night mission.
All the spacewalks and everything will take place, as we call it "sleep shift,"
and take the time to sleep during the day and get up and work at night.
Now, you went to the space station in 1999. So obviously, besides it being bigger,
how has the station changed since then?
PAYETTE: Oh, it's changed enormously, and I feel very privileged and I will have seen
it from the very beginning of the program to almost the completion of the construction.
When I was there in 1999, there was only two modules. And they had been put together just
a month before we had arrived.
It was a Russian module, Zarya, and the Node 1, Unity. Inside, there was nobody.
Actually, there was almost nothing.
We were bringing most of the initial equipment to outfit the interior and a little bit
of the exterior. So when we opened the hatch,
the ground had switched off the light from the ground and basically turned on the heat,
but there was nobody on board. Today we have people permanently inside the station.
We have permanent crew that rotate every six months. So it's going to be very different
when we knock at the hatch this time --
we're going to have somebody else on the other side. And of course, it's immense
compared to what I saw in 1999.
BEUTEL: Yeah, it's a three-bedroom-sized apartment, and you're right, we've had people
living there for eight years now,
coming up on eight years of permanent crewing of the station, which is exactly what
we're supposed to be doing up there.
The STS-123 crew will deliver the first section of Japan's laboratory, Kibo.
What does this small module add to the overall station?
PAYETTE: This is a milestone. You can appreciate that Japan has been waiting for this
moment for a long, long time, and it's been preparing all of its equipment for launch.
Because the Kibo module, the main module, is so large, it takes the entire cargo bay
of
the space shuttle. It's impossible to send it with every other element that comes with
it.
So what we decided is to send the pressurized module that stowage space, some
experimental equipment in there, ahead of time,
because it's small enough that we can park it on one of the nodes on the space station
until the next flight, when the big Kibo module will be hooked up to the station.
And once that is accomplished, then the crew will pick up the pressurized, small
pressurized module and put it on top of Kibo where it's going to stay.
It's its final location for the rest of the life of station.
BEUTEL: And then actually, it's exactly what you said, we have to do three shuttle
missions because this laboratory, the Japanese laboratory is so big.
This is the first one, and well, coincidentally, your mission, STS-127 next year,
will be the final mission when we take up the last pieces.
PAYETTE: Indeed.
BEUTEL: How are all these pieces going to work together?
PAYETTE: Oh, well, the pressurized module of course is a laboratory.
Just like Destiny, the U.S. lab is a laboratory,
Columbus that we just installed for the European Space Agency is a laboratory,
and we have the Russian laboratories as well.
This is where we conduct the experiments inside. The little pressurized module that we're
bringing up on 123 is for stowage. It's actually quite small,
it's the size of a closet when you go inside. You can't float about. Kibo is very large
and
will have incredible capacity for microgravity science inside.
But what the Japanese have also developed is an exposed facility. And we the astronauts
have kind of dubbed it "the porch."
Because you install it at the very tip of the big module, and in there will be experiments
which will be exposed to the vacuum of space.
They won't be inside a pressurized module inside normal air and normal pressure.
They will be out there exposed to the elements of space.
And that is what we're bringing on the third flight, the flight that I'll be on.
BEUTEL: And that helps -- why do you want to do that, why do you want to have --
PAYETTE: Well, particularly we want to study materials. We know materials degrade in space.
Space is a very hostile environment. It has radiation, micrometeorites,
extremes of temperature that changes all the time. It's no pressure, no air, no nothing.
So materials degrade in space. When we build satellites,
we want the satellites to be as robust as possible because it costs a lot of money to
send a
satellite out there, and we certainly depend on these. Same for a spacecraft.
And spacecraft that house people, particularly, we want them to be safe. So we'll be
testing some materials. We'll be testing also some fluids,
and trying to do a new mixture of metals and materials to see if we can come up with
things more robust.
And we need then afterwards to just expose them to the vacuum of space and see how they
behave.
BEUTEL: Okay, that takes place next year. Besides obviously the Japanese module that
we're taking up, a new Canadian robotics system named Dextre is flying on Endeavour.
And it's as close as you can get to an extra spacewalker.
DILLER: Dextre is another Canadian contribution to the International Space Station.
It supplements a robotic arm already in place called Canadarm2.
Dextre is like an extra pair of hands that will extend the arm's reach to help future
construction of the space station.
With its big arm, Canadarm2 can move around the station's exterior, move large modules
and help spacewalkers perform their tasks.
But Dextre can carry out operations too delicate for the big arm. It has a unique ability to
tackle assignments with more precision.
Think of Dextre as helping hands that use a set of arms equipped with claws to handle
very precise movements. It can't replace a spacewalker completely,
but it will make many tasks simpler because it handles duties previously only s
pacewalkers could perform.