After years of experience and successful involvement in the exploration of space NASA’s dream of International Space Station is about to become a reality. NASA hopes to complete the ISS by 2010 before the space shuttle fleet expires. The space shuttle has demonstrated the feasibility (and the dangers) of the reusable space craft. NASA views the construction and operation of a permanently manned space station as the critical next step in advancing human space exploration.
The international Space Station is providing an orbiting research base in which the effects of long stays in space on human physiology and well-being can be assessed. This information is essential if the space environment is to continue to be explored and exploited successfully and one of the major goals of NASA is to study the space station as an engineering test-bed providing the opportunity to learn how to build, operate, and maintain complex systems in space. And to fulfil this goal the discovery crewmembers performed the third space walk, American Robert Curbeam, and Swede Christer Fuglesang, to fix a damaged solar array. The accordian-like 34-metre array is supposed to fold up into a box when it is retracted.
It looks like they are having fun out there but not to forget the space hazards. Earlier attempts to fix the problem - including a highly unscientific request to an astronaut inside to do some exercise, hoping the movement would jostle the wing into place, failed. The solar wing is part of an interim power system for the space station.
A primary goal of space shuttle Discovery’s seven-day visit to the space station was to rewire the lab and hook a new set of solar wings on to the permanent electricity grid. The new panels rotate with the movement of the sun to maximise the amount of solar energy produced, but in order for the new panels to spin, the old panel had to be retracted.
Via: Stuff
