Space station addition opens
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Astronauts swung open the door to their new space station addition Saturday and floated into the spacious and sparkling white room, formally christening it “Harmony.”
Even though it looked immaculate inside, International Space Station commander Peggy Whitson and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli – the first to enter – wore surgical masks and goggles to protect themselves from any dirty stowaways, like dust, lint or crumbs.
The air inside the school-bus-size chamber was immediately tested, and Whitson later reported there wasn’t much debris inside at all.
Harmony was named by schoolchildren in America but made in Italy, which Nespoli proudly noted as he bobbed up and down in the 24-foot-long, 14-foot-diameter chamber that was delivered by shuttle Discovery.
“It’s a pleasure to be here in this very beautiful piece of hardware,” he said.
Flight director Rick LaBrode admired Harmony from Mission Control. “It’s bright, shiny … it’s as clean as can be, perfect shape,” he said.
The European Space Agency’s science laboratory, named Columbus, will hook on to Harmony as early as December. The Japanese Space Agency’s lab – called Kibo, or in English, Hope – will latch on to Harmony early next year.
“I love the idea that delivering this (Harmony) is beginning a whole new era of science in space,” Discovery’s skipper, Pamela Melroy, said in a series of TV interviews from inside the new addition.
Melroy said that was more important to her at the moment than being one of two female commanders in space at the same time.
Harmony also will function as a nerve center, providing air, electricity and water for the space station. It was launched with racks of computer and electronic equipment pre-installed.
All this gear had to be locked down for the jarring rocket ride to orbit, leaving the astronauts to undo more than 700 bolts to free up the equipment.
Perhaps just as important, Harmony will provide extra living space for the three space station residents. It is the station’s seventh room; the first was launched in 1998.
The space station’s crew will move Harmony to its permanent location after Discovery leaves in another week. Until then, the astronauts will be restricted on how long they can spend inside the new compartment because of the makeshift ventilation system currently in place.
With Harmony now operational, the astronauts turned their attention to Sunday’s spacewalk, the second of a record-tying five outings planned for the mission.
Astronauts Scott Parazynski and Daniel Tani plan to install spacewalking handrails and other equipment to the outside of Harmony, inspect a rotary joint for the station’s solar wings that is acting up, check for possible sharp edges on a rail for the robot arm, and disconnect cables and grounding straps from a giant girder that will be moved from one spot on the station to another.