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A privately funded balance block from Nanoracks will head to the International Space Station this weekend in the trunk of a SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule, adding to the orbiting laboratory’s capacity for scientific experiments in another milestone for commercial space development.
The Bishop bladder module, owned by Houston-based Nanoracks, is fixed inside the unpressurized cargo element of a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship awaiting launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Weather permitting, the automated cargo mission will take off from Pad 39A atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 11:39 am EST (1639 GMT) on Saturday. There is a 50-50 chance of favorable weather for launch on Saturday at Kennedy Space Center, and there is a good chance that the strong winds in the landing area of the Falcon 9 booster in the Atlantic Ocean will exceed the limits.
In bad weather in Florida or offshore, SpaceX could delay launch to a backup opportunity at 11:17 AM EST (1637 GMT) on Sunday.
In addition to approximately three tons of fresh food, supplies and experiments for the space station’s seven-person crew, freighter Dragon will deliver the first commercial bladder module to the orbiting outpost.
“This will be the first commercial module for the International Space Station designed and built here at Nanoracks,” said Brock Howe, the company’s project manager for the Bishop airlock. “We’ve been working on the airlock for about five years.”
Bigelow Aerospace’s expandable BEAM module was also developed by a commercial company, but BEAM was launched on the space station under sponsorship from NASA.
The bell-shaped module is about the size of a small cabinet, measuring 6.9 feet (2.1 meters) in diameter and 5.8 feet (1.8 meters) in length. Its dimensions were limited by the trunk size of the cargo ship Dragon, the only spacecraft capable of carrying large payloads outside the space station.
Including supporting hardware, the airlock weighs around 2,400 pounds (1,090 kilograms) at launch, according to NASA.
“If the volume (of Dragon’s trunk) were larger than an inch, so would our balance hatch,” said Mike Lewis, chief innovation officer at Nanoracks. “It’s big enough for people to climb.”
Nanoracks will use the airlock to move equipment in and out of the space station, expanding similar capacity currently provided by an air chamber inside the Japanese laboratory’s Kibo module.
Assuming the Cargo Dragon takes off on Saturday, the SpaceX supply ship approaches the space station to dock Sunday at 11:30 am EST (1630 GMT), targeting a docking port on the zenith, or space side facing Harmony Module.
The Dragon set for launch this weekend is the first in a new cargo capsule design based on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut ferry. The upgraded Dragon, or Dragon 2, can carry more gear to the station, fly for longer periods of time, and splash across the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Pacific, accelerating the return of time-sensitive biological samples to scientists.
Within days of arriving at the space station, the lab’s Canadian-built robotic arm will reach the dragon’s trunk and extract the Bishop airlock module. Canadarm 2 will place the Bishop airlock on an unused docking port at the end of the Tranquility module.
According to Howe, the astronauts will equalize the pressure between the space station and the new module, perform leak checks, then enter the airlock to connect cables to connect the new port with the station’s communications and power systems.
Nanoracks officials say they expect the airlock to be ready for operation within a week after the robotic arm pulls Bishop from the dragon’s trunk.
“The airlock is pretty simple in its usefulness,” Lewis said in a recent interview with Spaceflight Now. “It’s just an open cup that fits on the space station. We use the hatch on the station, so many of the complex mechanisms and electronics are already there. “
Nanoracks and other users currently rely on the Japanese equipment airlock to transfer experiments and small satellites between the station’s internal cabin and the airless environment outside the complex.
“About five years ago, Nanoracks identified the need for customers and market demand for a larger airlock and one that could be opened a little more frequently than the Kibo one,” Howe said in a pre-conference conference call. launch with reporters.
The airlock in the Japanese Kibo module works with a sliding table, where astronauts can place the equipment for transfer outside the space station.
“The Kibo airlock can transfer equipment the size of a microwave oven, while this new Nanoracks airlock we built will be able to handle something the size of a refrigerator or freezer. So it’s about five times the size of the Kibo airlock. “
The interior compartment of the Bishop airlock is equipped with rails to help astronauts place experiments and small satellites inside the module. Then the astronauts will close the hatches and air will be pumped out of the airlock, allowing the station’s robotic arm to remove Bishop from its docking position and place the module in space.
The airlock will expose the experiments to the harsh thermal and vacuum conditions of low Earth orbit, allowing Nanoracks’ customers to experience Earth imaging cameras, space science instruments and new technologies. The astronauts could also mount small satellites inside the Bishop for deployment at the end of the robot’s arm.
Bishop is designed to accommodate satellites up to 709 pounds or 321 kilograms. The Nanoracks deployer currently at the station is sized for satellites up to 220 pounds or 100 kilograms.
The Nanoracks animation below shows how the company plans to use the Bishop airlock, with the space station’s robotic arm moving the module in and out of its home on the Tranquility node. (EDITOR’S NOTE: The animation was created in 2018 and illustrates the Bishop module coming to an older, now retired version of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo vehicle.)
According to Nanoracks, the bladder is designed for at least 10 pressure cycles per year over 10 years of operation. The timing of Bishop’s operations will depend on customer demand, the availability of the robotic arm and the workload of the crew, officials said.
“We also have external payload mounts where we can accommodate payloads on the airlock,” Howe said. “We can also accommodate payloads inside the airlock while it’s still docked (at the space station). So there are many different environments that scientists can use, many different volumes and scientists can use, a lot of different payload power and data capabilities aboard the airlock that will really improve their ability to do really interesting science aboard. of the ISS. “
The Bishop airlock is also large enough to hold large space station hardware units that engineers may want to bring inside the complex for inspection and repair. Using the airlock in this way could reduce the number of spacewalks astronauts have to take outside the station, officials said.
So far, Nanoracks has signed up to NASA and the European Space Agency to use the Bishop airlock.
NASA has pre-purchased six airlock cycles, with options for four other uses. ESA is paying Nanoracks for five cycles of airlock.
“We are excited to see both NASA and ESA take advantage of commercially available opportunities on the space station,” said Jeffrey Manber, CEO of Nanoracks.
“This is how public-private partnerships are supposed to work,” Manber said in a statement. “Through our Space Act agreement with NASA, we have been given access to Node 3 (the Tranquility module) where the Bishop airlock will live. We have therefore privately funded the Bishop airlock, without using taxpayer funds for hardware, and we are in turn providing service at a competitive rate to both US and European governments, allowing the ISS to function at levels optimal productivity “.
NASA plans to use the Bishop airlock to get rid of space station waste as early as next year. The astronauts will fill the garbage and unnecessary equipment inside the airlock, then the airlock will release the garbage cans into orbit to burn as they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere within a few weeks or months.
“It’s not glamorous, but it’s necessary,” Lewis said.
A Japanese robotics company called GITAI also plans to test a small robotic arm inside the Bishop airlock next year.
Lewis said Nanoracks has invested somewhere between $ 15 and $ 30 million in developing Bishop’s airlock. Thales Alenia Space of Italy, which built several modules of the space station, fabricated the pressure shell of the airlock and delivered the hardware to Nanoracks in Houston for final setup before launch.
“The airlock also represents – from Nanoracks – the next step towards our goals, which are a commercial space station,” Howe said. “So this provides a lot of capabilities to enhance our engineering capabilities and manufacturing capabilities within our company to be able to achieve the ultimate goals of a commercial space station.”
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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