Japanese Craft Heads to Space Station
While the astronauts on the shuttle Discovery prepared for a landing in Florida on Wednesday, the Japanese space agency launched a powerful new rocket carrying an unmanned cargo ship on a $680 million maiden voyage to the International Space Station.
Loaded with 7,400 pounds of experiment hardware and supplies, the H.T.V. cargo craft represented a major milestone for the station program, an effort to give the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and its international partners another way to deliver crucial equipment after the space shuttle is retired next year.
The 184-foot-tall H-2B rocket roared to life on time at 1:01 p.m. Eastern time and quickly climbed away from launching pad No. 2 at the picturesque Tanegashima Space Center on the coast of southern Japan.
Powered by four solid-fuel strap-on boosters and a pair of hydrogen-fueled first-stage engines, the 1.2-million-pound rocket arced away to the southeast, trailing a churning cloud of exhaust and a brilliant plume of flame, lighting up the night sky for miles around.
The solid-fuel boosters burned out as planned and fell away about two minutes after liftoff, followed by first-stage burnout four minutes later at an altitude of about 117 miles.
The rocket’s second stage engine continued the ascent, shutting down 15 minutes after the launching and putting the H.T.V.-1 cargo ship in a preliminary orbit with a predicted high point of 186 miles and a low point of 124 miles.
Over the next week, flight controllers with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, will test the new ship’s systems and practice abort procedures while carrying out a series of rocket firings to catch up with the space station.
The H.T.V. measures 32 feet long, 14.4 feet wide and weighs some 23,000 pounds when carrying a full 13,200-pound load of cargo. For its maiden flight, the spacecraft was loaded with about 3.9 tons of equipment and supplies.
Unlike the shuttle, Russian Soyuz and Progress capsules and the European Space Agency’s automated transfer vehicle, or A.T.V., the H.T.V. features a pressurized compartment accessible by station astronauts and an unpressurized cargo bay to carry external experiments and hardware.
In another departure from past practice, the H.T.V. was not designed to dock with the station on its own. Instead, it will maneuver to a point directly below the lab and then wait for the station crew to grab it with the lab’s robot arm.
From there, the spacecraft will be moved to the Harmony module’s Earth-facing port and locked in place.
“On this particular flight, we’ve got about two-and-a-half tons of pressurized cargo flying to orbit and almost a metric ton of payloads externally coming to I.S.S.,” said Michael T. Suffredini, the space station program manager. “So it’s a significant amount of up mass to us.”
Along with crew supplies and equipment, the H.T.V. is carrying two experiments in the unpressurized cargo bay. One of them will study the chemical constituents of the extreme upper atmosphere, while the other will focus on how trace gases affect the ozone layer.
“It’s good to be able to finally start having this kind of research on board I.S.S.,” Mr. Suffredini said.
JAXA currently plans to build and launch one H.T.V. craft per year, although the agency could support two flights annually if necessary.
While the astronauts on the shuttle Discovery prepared for a landing in Florida on Wednesday, the Japanese space agency launched a powerful new rocket carrying an unmanned cargo ship on a $680 million maiden voyage to the International Space Station.
Loaded with 7,400 pounds of experiment hardware and supplies, the H.T.V. cargo craft represented a major milestone for the station program, an effort to give the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and its international partners another way to deliver crucial equipment after the space shuttle is retired next year.
The 184-foot-tall H-2B rocket roared to life on time at 1:01 p.m. Eastern time and quickly climbed away from launching pad No. 2 at the picturesque Tanegashima Space Center on the coast of southern Japan.
Powered by four solid-fuel strap-on boosters and a pair of hydrogen-fueled first-stage engines, the 1.2-million-pound rocket arced away to the southeast, trailing a churning cloud of exhaust and a brilliant plume of flame, lighting up the night sky for miles around.
The solid-fuel boosters burned out as planned and fell away about two minutes after liftoff, followed by first-stage burnout four minutes later at an altitude of about 117 miles.
The rocket’s second stage engine continued the ascent, shutting down 15 minutes after the launching and putting the H.T.V.-1 cargo ship in a preliminary orbit with a predicted high point of 186 miles and a low point of 124 miles.
Over the next week, flight controllers with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, will test the new ship’s systems and practice abort procedures while carrying out a series of rocket firings to catch up with the space station.
The H.T.V. measures 32 feet long, 14.4 feet wide and weighs some 23,000 pounds when carrying a full 13,200-pound load of cargo. For its maiden flight, the spacecraft was loaded with about 3.9 tons of equipment and supplies.
Unlike the shuttle, Russian Soyuz and Progress capsules and the European Space Agency’s automated transfer vehicle, or A.T.V., the H.T.V. features a pressurized compartment accessible by station astronauts and an unpressurized cargo bay to carry external experiments and hardware.
In another departure from past practice, the H.T.V. was not designed to dock with the station on its own. Instead, it will maneuver to a point directly below the lab and then wait for the station crew to grab it with the lab’s robot arm.
From there, the spacecraft will be moved to the Harmony module’s Earth-facing port and locked in place.
“On this particular flight, we’ve got about two-and-a-half tons of pressurized cargo flying to orbit and almost a metric ton of payloads externally coming to I.S.S.,” said Michael T. Suffredini, the space station program manager. “So it’s a significant amount of up mass to us.”
Along with crew supplies and equipment, the H.T.V. is carrying two experiments in the unpressurized cargo bay. One of them will study the chemical constituents of the extreme upper atmosphere, while the other will focus on how trace gases affect the ozone layer.
“It’s good to be able to finally start having this kind of research on board I.S.S.,” Mr. Suffredini said.
JAXA currently plans to build and launch one H.T.V. craft per year, although the agency could support two flights annually if necessary.
Source: New York Times
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