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A Japanese freighter cargo ship launched on Saturday for five days to the International Space Station, carrying a set of six spare batteries, an experimental life support system and a small landing craft to bring back specimens of the
Built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries under a contract with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the H-2 transfer vehicle took off on Saturday at 17:02 GMT (13:52:27 EDT). valve problem on the H-2B launcher of the cargo ship.
But no technical or meteorological problems arose during Saturday's countdown, and the 56.6-meter-high H-2B fired its two LE-7A first-stage main engines and four solid-propulsion engines. pad at the Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan.
The H-2B rocket quickly fired into the night sky at Tanegashima, where the takeoff took place at 2:52 am, Japan's standard time.
The four web boosters burned their pre-packaged propellant and were dropped from the central stage of the H-2B, covered with insulating orange foam, about two minutes into the flight. The LE-7A engines on the first stage of the rocket continued to fire, and the aerodynamic cowling of the launcher was dropped from the nose of the rocket to reveal the HTV refueling craft around T + plus 3 minutes 40 seconds upper atmosphere outfit.
A single LE-5B engine took about six minutes after take-off, firing more than eight minutes to maneuver the HTV refueling ship into a preliminary orbit of nearly 200 miles above Earth aligned with the ground track of the International Space Station.
Japanese officials confirmed the separation of the H-2 transfer vehicle about 15 minutes into the flight, and the freighter cargo was scheduled to launch its thrusters shortly after its deployment from the H-2B launcher. The rocket boosters will reshape the HTV's orbit over the next few days, moving closer to the space station before Thursday's arrival in the international research complex.
Astronauts Drew Feustel and Serena Auñón-Chancelier will use the station's Canadian-made robotic arm to trap HTV cargo ships in the form of a barrel around 8:00 am GMT (8:00 am EDT) Thursday. The robot arm will then station the HTV on a docking port of the station's Harmony module and the astronauts will open the hatches to unpack the contents of its compartment under pressure.
The HTV is loaded with more than 5.2 tonnes – more than 4.7 metric tons – of cargo. Among the logistical elements, 3,014 pounds (1,367 kilograms) of external equipment including six lithium-ion batteries and adapter plates.
In the HTV pressurized cabin, workers loaded 7,489 pounds (3,397 kilograms) of freight for JAXA, NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, including fresh produce,
The HTV is the largest logistics vehicle currently flying into the International Space Station, capable of carrying heavier loads than the Russian cargo ships Progress, SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus transporter.
JAXA uses HTV missions as part of its contribution to the space station program. The officials dubbed the supply ship HTV Kounotori, the Japanese word for "white stork".
Only one Space Station refueling vehicle – the SpaceX Dragon capsule – can bring significant cargo back to Earth. Russian Soyuz ships can send a limited amount of equipment back to the space station crews, and other spacecraft are designed to burn in the Earth's atmosphere as they return.
The Japanese Space Agency has developed a new way back for biological specimens to return to Earth from the space station, and the reentry capsule will be released later this year after the departure of the HTV.
The HTV is designed to burn in the atmosphere during reentry, but the small capsule back of the sample carries a heat shield to survive the return to Earth. The reentry vehicle is of a relatively modest size and measures 33 inches (84 centimeters) in diameter and 26 inches (66 centimeters) in height, with a weight of less than 400 pounds (180 kilograms), excluding the sample transported to the # 39; inside.
The JAXA indicates that the capsule has an internal volume of approximately 30 liters and that astronauts can load up to 44 pounds (20 kilograms) of specimens inside the landing craft, which contains a thermos-like container. to store refrigerated biological samples. This represents a fraction of the carrying capacity of the Dragon capsule, but the new HTV Small Return capsule will provide station managers with a new way to ensure critical items can return to Earth for analysis.
The astronauts will assemble the return capsule after the HTV arrives at the station and place it above the HTV front panel for deployment once the supply ship has left the station.
The capsule, which does not carry a motor, will be unleashed after the HTV has finished its desorbit burn. The reentry gear will deploy a parachute and dive into the Pacific Ocean, where recovery teams will pick it up and take it back to Japan for inspections.
The HTV's non-pressurized external payload bay is equipped with six new lithium-ion batteries to be installed on the solar structure of the space station, replacing the old nickel-hydrogen batteries used since the launch of the solar modules in the 2000s.
The space station has four huge solar power modules, each with solar wings of about 73 meters (240 feet). Each section of solar panels powers two electrical channels with 12 nickel-hydrogen batteries in charge, and NASA replaces the old batteries in the trellis section with six lighter-weight and more efficient lithium-ion batteries.
The first set of six new batteries launched during the most recent HTV mission in 2016, and two other HTV deliveries in 2019 and 2020, will complete the renewal of the battery.
The astronauts will make two spacewalks to install two of the new batteries launched aboard the Kounotori 7 spacecraft, while the station's robotic system will install the other four, all on the P4 segment of the port-side port. Both spacewalks were scheduled to take place before a scheduled crew rotation in early October, but delays in launching the HTV forced NASA to postpone the excursions until the end of the year.
Outgoing space station commander Drew Feustel, his NASA crewmate Ricky Arnold and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev are due to return to Earth in their Soyuz MS-8 spacecraft. the crew departing from Feustel, remaining on the complex in orbit with flight engineers Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Sergey Prokopyev.
Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague are to be launched on another Soyuz spacecraft on 11 October, followed by arrival at the space station six hours later to take the crew of the laboratory to five.
Feustel and Arnold join Gerst for upcoming space releases, but their return to the country next month has sparked a new battery replacement plan.
Also aboard the supply ship Kounotori:
- Two scientific racks Express the size of a refrigerator will allow the station to host more research experiments.
- An experimental European experimental closed – loop assistance system will demonstrate new air purification and oxygen generation capabilities that could be used in future deep – space missions. .
- A new research facility called Life Sciences glove box, built by JAXA in partnership with the Dutch company Bradford Engineering, will allow astronauts to work with samples of biological and human physiology experiments.
- Three Japanese CubeSats will be transferred from the HTV to the space station and put into orbit.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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