Japan Launches New Cargo Craft to Space Station
The Japanese Space Agency, a powerful new rocket Saturday carrying an unmanned spacecraft cargo terminal on a maiden voyage to the complex of some 7,400 tons of equipment and supplies delivered to the orbit.
With four boosters for a bright white exhaust and a warm pair of hydrogen fueled engines roaring at full throttle, thundered the H-2B of the launch ramp 2 at Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan to 1:01:46 pm EDT.
“The launch was beautiful,” Stephen Clark, an American journalist who is now the Aerospace, said in an instant message from Tanegashima. “The boosters lit by the orange glow characteristic of the way. The rocket went into a thick cloud covers approximately 25 seconds after launch, but the roar shook us for a few minutes there.”
The H-2B first and second stage worked as planned and 15 minutes after launch, the cargo was released HTV crafts in the proposed preliminary orbit, then an enthusiastic round of applause in the center of Japanese control.
The mission of 680 million dollars is a critical step for the program post-Station Space Shuttle NASA and its international partners to maintain the laboratory complex reconstituted after the space shuttle to be retired at the end of the year next.
HTV, the cargo spacecraft, developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration, or JAXA, as a contribution to the station, measuring about 32 meters long, 14.4 meters wide and weighs about 23,000 pounds fully loaded 13,200 pounds of cargo. For his maiden flight, the HTV-1 track of more than 3.5 tonnes of equipment and supplies.
In contrast to the Russian Progress supply ship vehicle transfer automated European Space Agency, or ATV, Japanese HTV provides a high-pressure section, accessible from the crew of the station and take a non-pressurized cargo, experiments and material that can be attached to the hull of the station.
And conceived as opposed to progress and the ATV, the Japanese ship, which is not to dock with the station on his own. Instead, the spacecraft autonomously maneuver to a position just below the station and waited for the robots in the laboratory under his arms around her and her struggle to a docking port.
“On this flight, we have about 2 1 / 2 tons of pressurized cargo into orbit and are near a tonne of payload to the ISS from the outside,” said space station program manager Mike Suffredini a pre-launch briefing. “It is therefore an important part of the body to us and it is important not only for the logistics of the team that much capacity under pressure, but also a bit of payloads.”
One of the payloads in the unpressurized cargo bay of HTV is a NASA experiment to map the components of the upper atmosphere and the other is a JAXA payload designed to study the effects of trace gases on ozone. Both are taken from the cargo area of the company HTV station robotic arm, installed on a porch outside a Japanese laboratory module Kibo robotic arm.
“To understand the most critical things for us based on our understanding of our environment and how we influence it, and it is good to finally start this kind of research aboard the ISS,” Suffredini said.
Not only that the flight maiden voyage of HTV, there was also the inaugural flight of the new H-2B in Japan, missile, hydrogen much higher power version of JAXA’s H-2A booster. The new rocket is equipped with four boosters of solid fuel instead of two and two hydrogen-fueled engines, the first step, instead of one. The upper floor has a hydrogen only engine power.
JAXA is planning to build and launch a missile HTV per year, although the body can support two flights per year, if necessary.
The HTV-1 flight plan calls for a full week of tests and ticketing on orbit final approach to the space station, including testing in order to abort the vehicle modes. Capture is scheduled for flight in eight days.
Final approach begins at a point directly about 3.1 miles behind the International Space Station. The HTV-1 would behave in a position above 1,000 meters below the lab complex maneuvers, and then a 180 degree Hasselblad is interrupted, if so, whether the vehicle closest to the station.
From there it will continue its approach to a point approximately 100 feet below the station, and pause again, before the point of capture, only 29 meters from the laboratory complex.
At this stage, with the HTV-1 drift free, station flight engineer Nicole Stott will use the robot laboratory for treatment on a device to lock. Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk will take over and lead to HTV-1 docking at a low point of the Harmony module, or the land before, port.
The day after the capture, the crew will open the hatches between the harmony and the company HTV and start driving equipment and supplies into the station.
