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

by Jay Chladek

  The P6 solar array truss contained two large solar wings, which each measured 112 feet long (34 meters) by 39 feet wide (12 meters). Once the P6 truss was installed, the array wings were carefully unfurled like a giant set of venetian blinds. Eventually, a total of four sets of solar array trusses would be delivered, but only the first set was installed on this flight on a temporary location at the top of the Z1 truss. Once the station’s main truss had been completed, the P6 arrays would be folded up and relocated to their permanent spot.

  The two craft docked with one another on 2 December, with the shuttle using the PMA on Unity’s nadir port. PMA-2 on the front of Unity was temporarily relocated to a CBM on one side of the Z1 truss to make room for a new module. The hatches between the ISS and the shuttle weren’t opened until 8 December, after three space walks to hook up the truss had been completed. Once the hatches were opened, the shuttle crew spent two additional days hauling supplies back and forth between the shuttle and the ISS before Endeavour undocked and headed for home.

  It would be two months before the space shuttle Atlantis paid the ISS its next visit on mission STS-98. The primary payload for this flight would be the heart of the U.S. segment of the station, the Destiny laboratory module. Measuring 28 feet in length (8.5 meters), Destiny is about a third longer than a pressurized Spacelab module and is slightly larger in internal diameter as well. Destiny would become the primary module for housing experiments on the U.S. side, but it would also become the station’s main command and control center for U.S. astronaut crews. It contained a sleeping berth in addition to its other equipment.

  Atlantis arrived and docked with the ISS on 9 February 2001. Before the Destiny module could be attached, astronauts Tom Jones and Robert Curbeam conducted a space walk to remove covers from the module and prepare its exterior. They then moved on to other tasks while mission specialist Marsha Ivins used the shuttle’s RMS to carefully move the module from inside the payload bay to the front port of the Unity module. The Destiny module was one of the larger structures to be hauled up by a shuttle to date and dwarfed the skinny-looking RMS arm, but Ivins succeeded in delicately berthing the module at its permanent location. At the conclusion of the first space walk and during the second one, Jones and Curbeam hooked up data and cooling lines. They also made preparations to move PMA-2 from its temporary location. Ivins next used the RMS to relocate the PMA from its Z1 location to the front of the Destiny module. For the next few years, PMA-2 on Destiny would be the primary docking port for visiting shuttles.

  Crew Change

  On 8 March 2001 the space shuttle Discovery lifted off from KSC on mission STS-102. Among the equipment intended for the ISS was a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM). Three MPLMs were built by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) in Europe. The modules each measure about 21 feet long (6.4 meters) and 15 feet in diameter (4.6 meters). A shuttle equipped with an MPLM can dock it with a CBM; once the hatches are opened, equipment can be transferred easily between it and the ISS. Compared to the much smaller Progress craft, an MPLM has thirty-one cubic meters of internal volume and can haul up to nine metric tons into orbit and bring almost that much home. The ability to bring large loads of equipment back to Earth would come in handy to help limit ISS clutter.

  The three MPLMs were named Leonardo, Raffaello, and Donatello after famous Italian artists from the Renaissance. They also happened to be the names of three of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, characters from the popular comic book and movie series. So a NASA patch logo for the MPLM program was developed, featuring a ninja turtle wearing an orange shuttle pressure suit in honor of the MPLMs.

  For this mission, the Leonardo MPLM was loaded primarily with equipment racks for the Destiny module. By using an MPLM, a heavy module could be flown empty and outfitted with heavy equipment later on. Plus, last-minute changes could be made to the equipment manifests before outfitting a module in orbit. While missions to haul MPLMs to and from the ISS weren’t as glamorous as assembly ones, these flights were among the most important of the ISS program.

  During almost nine days of docked operations, the combined crews conducted two assembly space walks and transferred equipment back and forth between the ISS and the MLPM. But the shuttle would also be conducting a crew transfer as well, bringing up the Expedition 2 crew of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev as commander and astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms as flight engineers. Like Expedition 1, this would be another minority-commander situation, but this time, it was a Russian in charge of two Americans. Shepherd, Gidzenko, and Krikalev returned to Earth on Discovery after spending over four months in orbit. Their mission to activate the ISS and set it up for continuous occupancy was hailed as a success. After a slow beginning, the ISS was off to a good start.

  Expedition 2

  During Expedition 2’s time in orbit, things continued to run smoothly. The crew continued the tasks set up by their predecessors and took time to conduct some of their own research as well. They didn’t have to wait long for their first visitors, as Endeavour visited on STS-100 in early April. Its main cargo was the Canadian-built Canadarm 2 RMS and the Raffaello MPLM. At a glance, the Space Station RMS (SSRMS) isn’t all that different from its shuttle cousin. It is designed to allow for payloads to be grappled by the station in a similar fashion, but what makes the SSRMS unique is that it has a grapple fixture at both ends. Through the use of special Power Data Grapple Fixtures fitted to various points along the ISS, the SSRMS can move itself from point to point like an inchworm to conduct various construction tasks as needed. With this new capability, assembly work would continue to take place independent of a shuttle, and the second arm would be useful in attaching modules where a shuttle arm couldn’t reach. Before Endeavour departed, the SSRMS was installed, activated, and checked out fully. The SSRMS control station was located in the Destiny laboratory.

  A Tourist Visits

  Just prior to Endeavour’s undocking, Soyuz TM-32 lifted off from Baikonur. The mission was part of a standard swap of the Soyuz lifeboat aboard the ISS for a fresh one, and the two-person crew of Talgat Musabayev and Yuri Baturin were sent to handle the mission since the shuttle was being used for early ISS crew rotations. The third seat was occupied by American Dennis Tito. Tito was not a career astronaut but rather the first commercial passenger who paid entirely for his own trip into space. Tito has a bachelor of science degree in aeronautics and astronautics and spent part of his professional career working for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1960s before changing his focus to investment management, where he made his fortune. He was originally contracted to fly to Mir before MirCorp’s funding dried up, but then he became the first commercial passenger signed up by the company Space Adventures, based in Virginia. After Mir was deorbited, the Russians chose to send him to the ISS.

  The decision did not go over well with NASA, as administrator Dan Goldin was dead set against it. While there was technically nothing NASA could do to stop Dennis Tito from flying to the ISS since he was a guest of the Russians, NASA would not have a hand in his training at all. Members of Congress also expressed their disapproval in Tito’s flight, calling into question his patriotism as an American. Soyuz TM-32 docked with the ISS on 30 April 2001, one day after Endeavour departed. The crew on board gave their colleagues a warm welcome, although the short-duration crewmembers were encouraged to keep Tito only in the Zvezda module during his time on board. Tito’s experience helped to pave the way for other space tourists with large enough pocketbooks to follow in his footsteps, and he reportedly enjoyed his experience of almost eight days in orbit immensely.

  Assembly Continues

  In June the Expedition 2 crew made preparations for the arrival of the Pirs airlock module on the Russian side. Yuri Usachev and James Voss donned a pair of Orlan suits and conducted an IVA inside the depressurized Zvezda module to attach a docking cone to the nadir port on the front of it. Pirs (a Russian term meaning “Pier”) would not only allow Soyuz and Progress spacecraft to dock there, but it
would also act as an airlock for cosmonauts using Orlan suits without the need to depressurize the RSM. Fuel transfer lines in Pirs would also allow Progress ships to top off both Zvezda’s and Zarya’s thruster fuel tanks.

  Construction work continued with STS-104 arriving at the station in mid-July. The main payload in the cargo bay of Atlantis was the new Quest airlock. Like the SSRMS delivered on the previous shuttle mission, the Quest would allow ISS crewmembers to perform construction tasks on the station without the need for a shuttle. While technically EVAs could be performed using Orlan suits from the Russian side of the station, NASA’s EMU would allow more comprehensive assembly tasks to be conducted.

  The end of Expedition 2 came on 12 August 2001 with the arrival of STS-105 at the station. Aboard the space shuttle Discovery was Expedition 3 commander Frank Culbertson Jr. and Russian flight engineers Mikhail Turin and Vladimir Dezhurov. In addition to the new crewmembers, the Leonardo MPLM in the payload bay was stacked to the gills with science racks and equipment, as work was underway to begin an intense phase of scientific activity during the next few months. Frank Culbertson was no stranger to spaceflight, as he had been a veteran of two shuttle missions, serving as commander for one of them. For the past several years, he had also served as the manager of NASA’s side of the Shuttle-Mir Program from 1995 until its conclusion. After eight days of docked operations and two EVAs, Usachev, Voss, and Helms returned home with the shuttle crew.

  A Dark Day in September

  By Tuesday, 11 September 2001, the Expedition 3 crew had settled into a regular routine. They were three days away from receiving the Pirs docking module, and all was proceeding well with no major problems. The Expedition 3 mission patch was rather unique, as it featured a book of space history turning the page from what had come before with Mir to the next, blank page featuring the future, with the ISS orbiting overhead. To people who witnessed the events of that day on the ground, it almost seemed like a page had turned in a book, albeit in a very dramatic fashion.

  That morning, four commercial airline flights originating on the East Coast of the United States were hijacked by Middle Eastern terrorists. Two of the planes were crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and one was crashed into a wing of the Pentagon in Washington DC. The fourth aircraft crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, when the passengers on board tried to take back the flight before it could bring further destruction down on another target. Passengers on all the flights, in addition to many on the ground, were killed when the first three planes impacted their targets. The crash and fire damage done to the World Trade Center caused the two towers to collapse, killing hundreds more people still trapped inside and many first responders from New York City’s fire and police departments.

  Compared to previous space stations with their ground-based tracking networks, the ISS had a pretty good hookup to the ground as communications through NASA’s TDRS network afforded almost-continuous two-way communications coverage. Crewmembers on board also had access to a new phone system, delivered with the station’s Destiny laboratory, that could be used to call home. Regular emails were also sent to the station’s laptop computers, but the crew did not have the Internet in those days.

  Despite the improved communications, the Expedition 3 crew still didn’t entirely know what was going on, but even from 250 miles up, they could see something bad was happening in New York, as they could clearly see a smoke-and-debris cloud enveloping Lower Manhattan when one of the station’s orbits took it over the East Coast of the United States. The crew began filming a video of what they were seeing when the World Trade Center north tower finally fell at 10:28 EDT. While everyone on the crew was shocked by what they saw, Frank Culbertson had a unique perspective, given that he was the only American in space at the time. When the ISS orbited over New York City the next day, he used part of the station’s communications loop to express his feelings of outrage as to what happened, but he also took the time to tell New Yorkers to not give up hope and that their city still looked very beautiful from space.

  45. Frank Culbertson’s photo of the New York–New Jersey area on 11 September 2001. Winds blew the smoke plume south. Courtesy NASA.

  While the attacks on 11 September touched everyone who witnessed them that day regardless of whether or not they were personally affected by it, Frank Culbertson also lost a friend. One of his Naval Academy classmates, Charles “Chic” Burlingame, was one of the pilots of American Airlines’ flight 77, which was sent crashing into the Pentagon by the hijackers. Frank’s two crewmates did their best to support their friend through this period, and the crew got back to the work at hand, since they could do nothing otherwise. Ultimately, though, all three men knew that the world they had left would not quite be the same one they would return to in December.

  Pirs Arrives

  On 14 September, a modified Progress carrying the Pirs airlock and docking compartment arrived at the ISS. The Pirs was very similar to the shuttle docking adaptor used on Mir, but this module would only accommodate Russian spacecraft. Once the new module was docked and activated, it wasn’t long before the crew conducted a total of four space walks from it during the next three months, using the Orlan suits to complete its installation to the Zvezda module. Three of the EVAs were conducted by Turin and Dezhurov, with Culbertson taking part in the fourth space walk with Dezhurov.

  Soyuz TM-33 arrived in October for a standard Soyuz ferry swap. On board were cosmonauts Viktor Afanasyev and Konstantin Kozeyev and French CNES astronaut Claudie Haigneré for a brief visit. Formerly known as Claudie André-Deshays, she had married fellow French astronaut Jean-Pierre Haigneré in the years since her visit to Mir. After eight days in orbit, the ferry crew returned home on Soyuz TM-32.

  Expedition 4

  Docking day for mission STS-108 arrived on 7 December 2001 when the space shuttle Endeavour paid the ISS a visit. Not much in the way of assembly took place on this flight, as most of it was dedicated to MPLM hardware transfers. But Endeavour’s personnel also included the Expedition 4 crew of cosmonaut commander Yuri Onufriyenko along with astronauts Carl Walz and Dan Bursch. Endeavour’s time at the station was extended by a day to allow the shuttle crew to repair a problem with the station’s treadmill and replace a failed compressor in one of Zvezda’s air conditioners. At the end of the docked period, the three newcomers took over occupation of the station while Culbertson’s crew went home. The results of several experiments that Expedition 3 had performed also returned home. The ISS was starting to deliver scientific results.

  During the start of 2002, the Expedition 4 crew performed a total of three construction EVAs. Two were performed on the Russian side from the Pirs airlock, using Orlan suits, while Walz and Bursch also took part in one space walk from the Quest airlock, using NASA EMUs in order to give the module a full checkout. It was the first time a staged EVA had been performed using EMUs without a shuttle present.

  On 10 April 2002 the space shuttle Atlantis arrived on mission STS-110, carrying the first part of the station’s main solar array truss, the S0 segment. It was attached to a special port located on top of the Destiny laboratory; over the course of four EVAs, the shuttle crew installed it, relocated the SSRMS to a fixture on the truss, and installed additional EVA handrails. It was the most ambitious construction mission to date, requiring two EVA teams, with two space walks each, to alternate the tasks. Team one was made up of astronauts Steve Smith and Rex Walheim. Team two consisted of astronauts Jerry Ross and Lee Morin. Both teams completed all four space walks without any major problems.

  No crew swap was scheduled for this shuttle visit. About a week later, Soyuz TM-33 arrived for a ferry swap. In command of the Soyuz was former Expedition 1 crewmember Yuri Gidzenko. Joining him were Italian ESA astronaut Roberto Vittori and the second paying space tourist to fly, Mark Shuttleworth. Shuttleworth was the first citizen of South Africa and the first resident of the African continent to fly into space. Possibly due to the s
mooth nature of Dennis Tito’s visit the year before and given that Shuttleworth wasn’t a citizen of the United States, no major government protest was lodged against this visit.

  After the ferry-swap crew returned home aboard Soyuz TM-32 in early May, Expedition 4 continued with its normal operations until STS-111 arrived in early June with the Expedition 5 crew. Cargo in Endeavour’s bay included a Mobile Base System (MBS) for the SSRMS. In combination with a mobile transporter cart that was installed with the S0 truss, the MBS would allow the SSRMS to travel the length of the station’s main truss once it was completed. Among the shuttle crew was French CNES astronaut Philippe Perrin. After this flight, CNES decided to disband its astronaut program, so remaining members of the CNES astronaut group were transferred to the ESA.

  Expedition 5

  The three members of Expedition 5 included Russian commander Valery Korzun, Russian flight engineer Sergei Treshchev, and NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. With this crew, a change was made to how the crews were selected, as no longer would it be a minority-commander situation. Instead, the commander would typically share nationality with one of the crewmates. Whitson was the project scientist in the Shuttle-Mir Program before she joined the astronaut ranks in 1996, and she was the first dedicated NASA scientist-astronaut to fly to the ISS. During Whitson’s stay in orbit, she was given the title of the first science officer aboard the ISS, as she conducted a total of twenty-one different experiments in life sciences and microgravity disciplines while also observing results from various commercial payloads that were on board during her stay.

  On 16 August, Peggy Whitson also conducted the first space walk by an American female using an Orlan suit as she and Valery Korzun installed new debris shields on the Zvezda module. The four-hour space walk was not easy, though, as given Peggy’s relatively small build, she could not completely cross her arms in front of her. Yet they completed the task with no problems. Korzun and Treshchev conducted a more ambitious space walk ten days later. They retrieved some Japanese experiment racks, installed EVA tether points, and added antennae for the station’s ham radio.