New Parking Spots for the International Space Station

“It’s part of what we thought was necessary” as the station builds up to support six crewmembers, said NASA’s station programme manager Mike Suffredini.

A five-and-a-half hour spacewalk was completed by the commander and lead engineer on the ISS Tuesday, July 15, 2008, in preparation for the larger crew size of six in the upcoming months. The second in less than a week, Cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko will be preparing to install a docking target in addition to upgrades in order for future spaceships to automatically berth to the ISS.

As early as next May, the number of residents onboard will increase from three to six. Because of this, two three-seater Russian Soyuz capsules will be anchored at the station at all times, for emergency returns to Earth. Additionally, the Russian berthing slips will be used by Europe’s unmanned cargo ships, with the first arriving in April.

Next year will be a big event for the ISS, with Russia launching a small combination docking compartment/research laboratory to the International Space Station. The module will replace the cancelled Russian Docking Compartment 1, nearly identical to the station’s Pirs docking compartment, which Russia delivered in 2001 for a five-year span. Slated for an August 2009 launching, the unmanned Progress rocket will carry the docking compartment four berthing slips for Russian and European vehicles.

Last Thursday, both cosmonauts had removed “an explosive bolt from their Soyuz capsule” in an effort to trouble-shoot they reasoning of two previous Soyuz spacecrafts that had landed hard and off-course. One of ten bolts aboard the Soyuz that fire to separate the crew compartment from an instrumentation and propulsion module before atmospheric re-entry, possibly this bolt will be able to help engineers figure out why it is occurring. According to several online space organizations, during last week’s spacewalk “Volkov had removed one of the redundant bolts and handed it over to Kononenko, who sealed in blast-proof steel canister. It will fly home with the crew in October.”