Category: solararray

I have been to the World Space Expo (WSE) 2007 at Kennedy Space Center today. I just returned back from the evening BBQ event. It was a lot of fun. Among others, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter appeared. But the World Space Expo is a story in itself. What I am now focusing on is the “repair kit” for the ripped ISS solar array.

At WSE, there was a NASA pavilion. It contained a lot of actual space hardware. At some both covering extravehicular activity (EVA) tools, a sample of solar array repair kit could be seen. Of course, it is highly improvised, but it promises to do the job:

Joe from Johnson Space Center (Houston, Texas) presented it. He said he’d just run into local hardware store to get the necessary parts. When I returned to the hotel, I found this picture on the NASA space shuttle home page:

As you can see, there is large similarity between the two. So I guess I saw a live piece of really important space hardware.

BTW: does that look like duct tape? I think so … On the space station, they use Kapton tape – and I have been told it is the space equivalent of duct tape ;)

So now let’s please all cross fingers that the repair goes well on tomorrows spacewalk.

And if you stay in the Orlando and Cocoa area, I recommend you drop in over the weekend to Kennedy Space Center. There is not only the great expo, but an even more promising air show on Saturday and Sunday.

If you intend to view Atlantis’ December, 6th STS-122 launch, be sure to follow international space station (IIS) and STS-120 status updates. While there is everything going very well with space shuttle processing at Kennedy Space Center, Constraints come in from the orbiting laboratory. Most importantly, the solar array rip could prevent enough electricity to be generated by the complex to add the Columbus module (the primary payload for STS-122). It there isn’t enough power for Columbus, there is no point in bringing it up. So NASA can only launch Atlantis if the station is ready.

This is also the reason why NASA has prioritized solar array repair over all other STS-120 tasks. Getting them in a stable condition is absolutely vital for the health of the whole station program.