Outposts on the Frontier: A Fifty-Year History of Space Stations (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight)

by Jay Chladek

  The NASA food lab has been improving their menu with more choices as they get feedback from ISS crews returning from orbit. A small selection of food choices that was perfectly suited for a two-week shuttle mission usually becomes boring after a months-long ISS assignment, so work continues constantly to expand the menu.

  52. Expedition 20 crewmembers Kopra, De Winne, Romanenko, and Barratt enjoying dinner in the Unity node. Various American and Russian foods along with fresh produce from a Progress resupply can be seen. Courtesy NASA.

  During the early days of the ISS, there were plans to fly a refrigerator and freezer in the habitation module, but when the module got axed during budget cuts, managers in charge of JSC’s food lab were able to convince NASA administrators to maintain the food research funds, which were instead used to come up with more freeze-dried and thermostabilized menu choices. A benefit of that funding has been the introduction of breakfast breads and warm dessert dishes. Such comfort foods have become very popular.

  To help track what astronauts eat, they each fill out a questionnaire that asks how many of each food group they consume. Additional tracking is done with bar codes on the food containers. So when a container is opened, it is scanned into the system; when the container is empty, it is scanned again to help track what was consumed and when. Each food container is about as large as a thick college textbook and contains nine meals’ worth of food. The food packages themselves are also bar coded, but they typically aren’t scanned unless required for a food-intake experiment. Consultations are done with the mission’s supporting flight surgeons on a regular basis to help monitor any dietary issues.

  More Assembly

  On 17 March 2009 Discovery next visited the ISS on STS-119, carrying in its cargo bay the S6 truss containing the final set of solar arrays and storage batteries. Due to the proximity of the shuttle to some modules on the ISS, it took some interesting coordination. The S6 was lifted out of the bay by the shuttle’s RMS and then handed off to the SSRMS while the RMS was repositioned. Then the segment was handed back to the RMS before the SSRMS was moved on the main truss to its installation location and the final handoff was made between the two arms.

  The S6 segment was finally installed on the truss on the second day with astronauts Steve Swanson and Richard Arnold making the final connections during an EVA. Joe Acaba, the first astronaut of Puerto Rican descent, also performed two space walks on this flight, alternating with Swanson and Arnold as EVA partners. Both Arnold and Acaba were part of the first class of educator-astronauts selected by NASA. The educator astronauts have teaching backgrounds rather than military or science ones, but they are fully trained as mission specialists. In addition to their astronaut duties, they also act as liaisons between educators, schools, and NASA personnel, to help educate children about spaceflight.

  With the addition of the fourth set of solar arrays, the ISS was now operating at full power. Sandy Magnus switched positions on Expedition 18 with JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata, who would continue activation work in the Kibo laboratory. Wakata had been a member of the astronaut corps since 1996 and was the first Japanese astronaut to fly as a mission specialist on STS-72. Wakata was the first JAXA astronaut involved directly in ISS construction; with his transfer, he became the first Japanese ISS crewmember.

  The Slight Chill

  Wakata’s time as part of Expedition 18 was very brief, as the day after Discovery departed the ISS, Expedition 19 crewmembers Gennady Padalka and astronaut Michael Barratt launched into orbit aboard Soyuz TMA-14. Joining them was spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi. Simonyi was only the second Hungarian to fly into space and had made his living working as a software developer for Microsoft in its early days before forming his own company. This was his second trip into space, as he had flown to the ISS on Soyuz TMA-10 in 2007. To date, he is the only “tourist” to visit the ISS twice. After a week in orbit conducting research and communicating with schools via the station’s ham radio, Simonyi returned home on TMA-13 with Lonchakov and Fincke.

  Expedition 19 got off to a slightly less-than-stellar start as word got to the press that ISS commander Padalka was not happy that he was being forced to use only the equipment in the Russian side of the station for exercise and hygiene due to a disagreement on the ground. While the relationship between space workers from the two countries had become friendlier over the past fifteen years, there was still some partisanship going at the government and management levels during negotiations. The bill for Russian launch services had gradually been going up; with shuttle retirement coming very soon, it was looking like negotiated costs to launch astronauts on the Soyuz would escalate even further.

  A war between Russia and the republic of Georgia in the summer of 2008 over the disputed regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia didn’t help matters since the United States was against Russian military action. Accusations were made that once hostilities started, Russian crewmembers on the ISS had surveyed the disputed region supposedly for military purposes instead of peaceful ones. While the war between the two former Soviet republics didn’t last long, it did create a slight cooling of relations between Russia and the other ISS participants. But life on the ISS still continued more or less as normal, even if the bureaucrats and politicians didn’t entirely see eye to eye. However, this wouldn’t be the last time that such world events would cast a shadow over the ISS.

  According to astronauts who have flown to the ISS, Moscow tends to keep its operational tasks for the Russian crewmembers separate from the U.S. side (which also includes the JAXA and ESA assets). On orbit though, ISS crewmembers consider themselves a single crew, and they help out one another whenever possible, regardless of whether it is an American providing assistance as needed on the Russian side or a cosmonaut helping out on the U.S. side. Each crew is a little different, but to date, there has been no indication that an ISS commander has tried to rule with an iron hand due to some political mandate.

  Six Crewmembers

  Two months later, on 27 May 2009, Soyuz TMA-15 lifted off from Baikonur with Expedition 20 crewmembers Roman Romanenko from Roscosmos, Frank De Winne from the ESA, and Robert Thirsk of the Canadian Space Agency. Rather than taking over for the previous crew, they would instead expand Expedition 19 from three people to six to become Expedition 20. For the first time, all major agencies would be represented simultaneously by ISS crewmembers. The newcomers docked with the ISS two days later and started a new phase of operations as the station was now fully manned.

  As part of one Japanese experiment, Wakata performed something that might be considered a little extreme. He tested out a new type of experimental underwear by wearing it for one month to see if the fabrics it was made from helped to control odors. The new material in the underwear did its job, and fortunately for Wakata, he did not stink while wearing them. The underwear returned with Wakata when STS-127 visited the station.

  STS-127 was supposed to launch in June, but problems with a gaseous hydrogen leak at the pad forced a month-long delay as engineers replaced equipment to correct it. Even after the hardware problem was fixed, weather problems kept Endeavour grounded during four more launch attempts. Finally Endeavour got off the pad on 15 July 2009. The main payload of this flight was the external experiment rack for the Kibo laboratory, along with some additional equipment for the interior.

  One experiment of note from this mission was a lidar system known as Dragoneye, built by the commercial firm SpaceX. This was a piece of equipment designed for use on SpaceX’s Dragon cargo vehicle to help with rendezvous. NASA had been looking to commercial firms to take over delivery of supplies on the ISS, and SpaceX was one of the firms given a contract for services. Formed by entrepreneur Elon Musk, SpaceX was developing the Dragon spacecraft and the Falcon 9 rocket in-house, so it wouldn’t need to subcontract launch services for its spacecraft to other companies.

  As of 2009 SpaceX had been successful in launching the Falcon 1 rocket after three attempts and was about a year away from flying its
first Falcon 9 with a boilerplate Dragon spacecraft. What made Dragon different from the Progress, ATV, and Japanese HTV vehicles was that it had a heat shield. Once the shuttle program was retired, Dragon would be the only vehicle capable of returning bulk cargo from the ISS back to Earth, compared to the tiny amount that could be crammed into a Soyuz with a returning crew. SpaceX had more ambitious plans, as the company was also designing a Dragon variant for use as a manned spacecraft capable of carrying up to seven crewmembers to the ISS.

  Five EVAs were conducted during STS-127. Veteran spacewalker Dave Wolf was the lead for three of the EVAs. U.S. Army colonel Tim Kopra was his partner for the first EVA as the pair attached the external experiment racks to the Kibo laboratory. Wolf and rookie astronaut Tom Marshburn outfitted the station with some replacement equipment in external stowage racks on the second EVA. Marshburn may have been new to spaceflight, but not to NASA, having worked as a flight surgeon at JSC before his selection in 2004. With construction of the ISS nearing an end, the primary purpose of the next few shuttle flights would be to equip the station with as many spares as possible, since once the shuttle retired, there would be no way to send the heaviest equipment up anymore.

  On the fourth EVA, Dave Wolf was joined by rookie astronaut Christopher Cassidy. Cassidy was a former U.S. Navy SEAL, and his prespaceflight exploits included two six-month tours of duty in direct support of Operation Enduring Freedom only weeks after the events of 11 September 2001. The astronaut exploits of fellow SEAL veteran Bill Shepherd inspired Cassidy to join NASA. Shepherd was very supportive of Cassidy, and the two men became good friends thanks to the close-knit community of SEALs. Like Tom Marshburn, Cassidy became an astronaut with the 2004 class and performed support duties, including manning the CAPCOM console at mission control.

  The third EVA had to be cut short when readings from Cassidy’s suit indicated higher-than-normal levels of carbon dioxide in its air supply. Like the shuttle, the EMU uses a lithium hydroxide chemical bed to collect exhaled carbon dioxide. For some reason, only part of the chemical bed was scrubbing the air. It was getting oversaturated and becoming less effective, so the task of installing fresh storage batteries on the truss had to be cut short as a safety precaution. Two additional EVAs conducted by Marshburn and Cassidy over the next few days got the battery installation completed along with work on the Kibo’s external racks. After eleven docked days with the ISS, Endeavour returned home with Koichi Wakata. Taking Wakata’s place on the ISS was Tim Kopra.

  The COLBERT

  In late August the space shuttle Discovery paid the ISS a visit with an MPLM full of supplies during STS-128. Among the cargo was a new treadmill for the station. It was known as the Combined Operation Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, or COLBERT for short. This new treadmill was designed to supplement the older one. It featured improved technology for longevity and consumed less power during use. Having two treadmills on the station in addition to the bicycle ergometer meant that several crewmembers could exercise simultaneously rather than having to schedule times around one another. The COLBERT was temporarily stowed in the Harmony module since its final home module wasn’t scheduled to fly until STS-130.

  The COLBERT was named for comedian Stephen Colbert, the host of a political-comedy television show at the time known as The Colbert Report. Colbert was a space fan and a friend of astronaut Garrett Reisman. During the previous year, NASA hosted a poll on its website to name the final node module slated for delivery in 2010. There was a short list of names, but voters could also write in additional choices. So as a good-natured hijack, Colbert urged his viewers to go to the website and vote to name the module Colbert. Due to public interest, “Colbert” overwhelmingly got most of the votes. But rather than naming the module Colbert, NASA decided to name the treadmill after Colbert instead and named the final node Tranquility. The whole incident generated some nice public relations for NASA, and a special patch was designed for the COLBERT, featuring Stephen Colbert in a yellow jogging suit running on the treadmill bearing his name.

  Other cargo carried up on Discovery included a new air-revitalization system for the ISS. While the systems already in place aboard the ISS were adequate to the task of supporting six crewmembers, it is always a good idea to have excess capacity. That way, if one of the life-support systems fails or has to be taken off-line for maintenance, usage problems are less likely to crop up. Air circulation aboard a station as large as the ISS is of critical importance to help prevent carbon dioxide gas pockets from forming in the nooks and crannies of modules. A new ammonia coolant tank was also brought up, and three space walks were conducted to replace the old ammonia tank with this newer one in preparation for the arrival of the Tranquility node. Tim Kopra returned home on this mission, being replaced on Expedition 20 by astronaut Nicole Stott.

  Expedition 21 Handover

  Handover for the first half of the six-person crew occurred on 1 October 2009 when Soyuz TMA-16 arrived to start Expedition 21. Jeffery Williams and Maksim Surayev would replace Padalka and Barratt. Frank De Winne took over as the first ESA astronaut to command the ISS. Williams would take over for De Winne on Expedition 22. Joining the two newcomers on the Soyuz crew was Canadian spaceflight participant Guy Laliberté, a former circus performer and founder of Cirque du Soleil. Laliberté was flying to draw attention to his charity, the One Drop Foundation. One Drop’s stated goal is to fight world poverty and help ensure that people all over the world have access to clean water. After a week in orbit, Laliberté returned home with Padalka and Barratt on Soyuz TMA-14.

  HTV Arrives

  On 10 September 2009 a Japanese H-IIB rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center just south of the Japanese mainland. Its payload was HTV-1, a transfer vehicle that contained nearly four metric tons of supplies for the ISS. Six metric tons can be carried on an HTV, but JAXA gave the module a smaller cargo load to make room for more propellant in order to conduct a thorough check of the vehicle before it approached the station. The craft arrived at the ISS on 17 September and was snagged successfully by the SSRMS before it was berthed to the nadir CBM port of the Harmony module. The HTV remained docked for about a month and a half before it was released to burn up on reentry.

  So as not to interrupt the Japanese fishing industry near Tanegashima Island, H-II rockets can only be launched during a brief period of a few weeks, meaning HTVs can only fly to the ISS once a year. But the addition of this new cargo capability has made the ISS more self-sufficient. In 2018, Japan hopes to add a cargo return capsule to the HTV so that it will be able bring back cargo as well as send it up.

  Ares I-X and Constellation Cancellation

  At the end of October, pad 39B at KSC hosted a new rocket, the Ares I-X, which would conduct the first test flight of the Constellation program. The Ares I rocket design was to become the new launch vehicle for NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which would dock with either the ISS or mission-specific modules intended for flights to the moon or Mars. These mission modules would be lofted into orbit by the much larger Ares V rocket. Ares I would use a five-segment, shuttle-based solid-rocket motor for its first stage and a liquid-powered second stage with the Orion spacecraft sitting on top.

  No agency had ever used a solid motor exclusively as the first stage of a manned launch vehicle before, and there were many unknowns. To test the configuration, NASA modified a four-segment shuttle SRB with a dummy fifth segment and upper stage to simulate the Orion configuration. While not as tall as the Saturn V, the Ares I-X was the tallest thing to fly from Launch Complex 39 in almost four decades. The ghostly white rocket on pad 39B towered over the space shuttle Atlantis sitting on pad 39A in preparation for STS-129 that November. After a one-day launch delay due to range weather restrictions, Ares I-X roared into the sky at 11:30 EST on 28 October 2009. The rocket performed flawlessly on ascent and gave engineers a lot of test data to digest. Everyone involved with the program that day was optimistic about the future of Ares I and the Constellation program,
based on the performance of this first test flight.

  Unfortunately, in early 2010 the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama decided to cancel the Constellation program. Development of the Orion spacecraft would continue, but without a launch vehicle, Orion wouldn’t be flying in space anytime soon, let alone to the moon or Mars. Funding also wouldn’t be as plentiful due to a financial recession that began in 2008.

  Instead, the ISS program would be NASA’s only major manned program for the foreseeable future, and the Russian Soyuz would be the only way crews could get to it. As expected, the price of a ride to the ISS aboard a Soyuz doubled from about $32 million to $65 million when the time came for NASA to negotiate with Roscosmos for additional Soyuz modules. More funding was awarded to SpaceX for their manned Dragon craft. But at the time the cancellation of Constellation was announced, the decision was met with a lot of criticism from former NASA engineers and astronauts who were concerned that putting the future of NASA’s manned spaceflight activities in the hands of the Russians in the near term and commercial companies in the long term without a backup was inviting potential disaster. As of early 2010 no commercial spacecraft had successfully been flown into orbit.

  Poisk

  ISS assembly work continued with the arrival of the Poisk (a Russian name meaning “Search”) module at the ISS. The Poisk, also referred to as Mini-Research Module 2, was a docking module similar to the Pirs docking compartment. During the previous summer, Padalka and Barratt conducted a couple of Orlan space walks (one inside the depressurized Zvezda) to prepare the ISS to receive the Poisk module by placing antennae and a docking cone on the Zvezda module’s zenith port. The zenith port was originally supposed to host the Russian solar array tower, until budget cuts forced the tower’s cancellation. The Poisk was launched on 10 November on a modified Progress tug and docked successfully with the station on 12 November. The Progress tug departed the station in early December once the module’s systems were activated, exposing a new docking port for the ISS. Poisk gave the ISS a fourth Russian docking port so that three Soyuz craft could dock with it while the aft port was occupied by a Progress or an ATV. An additional space walk to install Poisk’s docking antennae to prepare it for receiving its first Soyuz craft was conducted in January of 2010.