Energy & Environment

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16 March 2009
Shuttle to Deliver First Japanese Crew Member to Space Station

By Cheryl Pellerin
Staff Writer

Washington -- Ten minutes after the sun set in Florida and just over a month after its original launch date, space shuttle Discovery roared off the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center March 15 on a 13-day mission to deliver the International Space Station’s final set of solar array wings, completing the station’s backbone.

STS-119 mission commander Lee Archambault is leading Discovery's seven-member crew, which includes pilot Tony Antonelli and mission specialists Joseph Acaba, John Phillips, Steve Swanson, Richard Arnold and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata.

“Shuttle Discovery,” Mission Control Houston announced as the launch lit up the dusk, “taking the space station to full power for full science.”

Space Station Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke called from the space station after watching the launch to congratulate the teams involved in Discovery’s successful launch.

LEAKS AND FIXES

Discovery’s scheduled February 12 launch was postponed when NASA managers decided they needed more data about a problem identified during space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-126 mission in November 2008. Gaseous hydrogen was flowing at a higher-than-normal rate, and later inspections showed a failed part on one of the flow-control valves.

The problem was fixed and the launch rescheduled for March 11. A few hours before that launch, technicians discovered a hydrogen leak on the shuttle's ground-support equipment. Technicians rebuilt and replaced seals and other components associated with the system.

“I’m really proud of the team that pulled together over the last few days to fix the hydrogen leak on the side of the orbiter on the ground-support equipment,” shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach said during the post-launch briefing in Florida. “That worked just exactly as we had anticipated. The leakage there tonight was zero.”

The mission will feature four space walks to help install the backbone segment to the right side of the station and to deploy its solar arrays.

The arrays will contribute a quarter of the electricity needed to fully power science experiments and support the station’s crew, which will grow to six members during Endeavour’s STS-127 mission, scheduled to launch May 15.

Atlantis’ STS-125 mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope is scheduled to launch May 12. The 11-day effort to the first telescope designed to be repaired in space by astronauts will deliver new instruments, gyros, batteries and other components critical to extending the observatory’s life through 2013.

GIANT STEP FOR JAXA

JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata will travel to the space station as an STS-119 mission specialist but will stay aboard the station after Discovery docks to become an Expedition 18 flight engineer -- the first JAXA station crew member.

Sandy Magnus, who arrived at the station on STS-126 in November, will return home on Discovery.

“This mission is a giant leap for the Japanese manned space activity program,” JAXA Vice President Yukihide Hayashi said at the post-launch briefing. “It will accumulate valuable knowledge and experience for the future Japanese space-utilization program.”

Wakata, an aerospace engineer, has flown two shuttle missions. In 1996 he was the first Japanese mission specialist on Endeavour’s STS-72, whose crew members conducted two space walks to demonstrate and evaluate techniques to be used in assembling the space station.

In 2002, on Discovery’s STS-92 mission, Wakata became the first Japanese astronaut to work on space station assembly. During the 13-day mission, the seven-member crew attached the station’s first backbone section -- the Z1 truss -- and performed four space walks. On STS-119 he will help deliver the final space station backbone segment.

“When I flew on STS-92,” Wakata said at a recent crew briefing, “nobody was living aboard the International Space Station. It was so small -- it was a little bigger than my apartment in Tokyo, but now it’s more than three times that size.”

He added, “I’m very lucky to be able to serve on this flight to deliver the last component of the truss segment of the International Space Station as well.”

FIRST FLIGHT IN 2009

STS-119 is the 125th space shuttle flight and the 28th flight to the space station. Eight flights to the station and one to the Hubble Space Telescope remain before the shuttles retire in 2010.

Two crew members, Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold, are two of three former schoolteachers chosen as mission specialists in the 2004 Educator Astronaut Class.

Acaba has middle school and high school math and science teaching experience. Arnold has teaching experience at middle schools and high schools around the world. He was a mission specialist for the 13th NASA Extreme Environments Mission Operations activity, called NEEMO, in August 2007.

Teacher-turned-astronaut Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger is scheduled to launch in February 2010.

More information about STS-119 and the International Space Station is available at the NASA Web site.

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