FW: VAB - Shuttle Endeavour launches from Florida

Shuttle Endeavour launches from Florida NGC

The US space shuttle has made its final night launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Endeavour orbiter soared into the Florida sky on a 13-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

It is delivering a connecting node and a large window module in what will be one of the last ISS assembly flights.

The US space agency (Nasa) plans just four further shuttle missions after this one - and all of them are planned to launch in daylight hours.

The blast-off occurred at 0414 local time (0914 GMT), 24 hours behind schedule. Endeavour should have left Earth on Sunday but was held on the pad because of a thick layer of cloud blanketing Florida's Space Coast.

Monday's weather was much more obliging, and the shuttle's ascent to orbit made for quite a spectacle.

"It lit up the Kennedy Space Center," said shuttle flight director, Mike Leinbach.

"I saw it very clearly through solid rocket booster separation, and then it disappeared behind some clouds and I got kinda disappointed. But then it broke out of those clouds and that's when I was able to see it all the way out to seven minutes in flight. For the last night launch, it treated us well."

Endeavour's mission is an important moment for the European Space Agency's (Esa) contribution to the station project. Both the new modules were manufactured in Italy by Thales Alenia Space.

Node 3, also known as Tranquility, will house the station's core life-support systems.

It will also store a treadmill the crew must use regularly to exercise their bodies and maintain bone density.

One of the risks of living in microgravity conditions is that bones tend to lose strength over time.

The Cupola is an observation tower that will be used to control robots working on the exterior of the platform.

It is constructed in the shape of a dome, with six trapezoidal side windows and a circular top window of a little under 80cm, making it the largest window ever built for space.

The Cupola is travelling into orbit attached to the end cone of Node 3 but once in orbit will be transferred to a berthing point that looks straight down to Earth.

The spectacular views from the Cupola mean it is likely to become a popular place on the station for astronauts to relax.

Esa's project manager on Node 3 and the Cupola, Philippe Deloo, told the BBC: "I heard that on orbit the most favourite past-time of the crew when they're off duty is to watch out the window and look at Earth.

"The psychological effect of being able to look outside, to look at the Mother Earth, is something that has long been put forward as an argument to have windows on the station."

Endeavour's crew is commanded by George Zamka, a colonel in the US Marine Corps, and includes the British-born mission specialist Nicholas Patrick.

Dr Patrick will conduct the three spacewalks to install the two modules with colleague Bob Behnken.

 

Vehicle Assembly Building


 
 
The Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) is one of the largest buildings in the world. It was originally built for assembly of Apollo/Saturn vehicles and was later modified to support Space Shuttle operations. High Bays 1 and 3 are used for integration and stacking of the complete Space Shuttle vehicle. High Bay 2 is used for external tank (ET) checkout and storage and as a contingency storage area for orbiters. High Bay 4 is also used for ET checkout and storage, as well as for payload canister operations and solid rocket boster (SRB) contingency handling.

The Low Bay area contains Space Shuttle main engine maintenance and overhaul shops, and serves as a holding area for SRB forward assemblies and aft skirts.

During Space shuttle build-up operations inside the VAB, integrated SRB segments are transfered from nearbay SRB assembly and checkout facilities, hoisted onto a Mobile Launcher Platform in High Bays 1 or 3 and mated together to form two complete SRBs. The ET, after arrival by barge, is inspected and checked out in High Bays 2 or 4 and then transfered to High Bay's 1 or 3 to be attached to the SRBs already in place. The orbiter is then towed over from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the VAB transfer aisle, raised to a vertical position, lowered onto the Mobile Launcher Platform and then mated to the rest of the stack. When assembly and checkout is complete, thecrawler-transporter enters the High Bay, picks up the platform and assembled shuttle vehicle and carries them to the launch pad.



The VAB covers 3.25 hectares (8 acres). It is 160 meters (525 ft) tall, 218 meters (716 ft) long and 158 meters (518 ft) wide. It encloses 3,664,883 cubic meters (129,428,000 cubic feet) of space.

• Flag & Bicentennial Emblem: Added in 1976, required 6,000 gallons of paint. The flag is 64 x 33.5 meters (209 x 110 ft) in size. Each strip on the flag is as big as the tour buses used to transport visitors around KSC
• Steel: 89,421 metric tons (98,590 tons)
• Concrete: 49,696 cubic meters (65,000 cubic yards)
• Piling: 4,225 open-end steel pipe piles, 0.4 meters (16 inchs) in diameter were driven 49 meters (160 ft) into bedrock.
• Air Conditioning: 9,070 metric tons (10,000 tons), 125 ventilators.
• Lifting Devices: 71 cranes; two 227 metric ton (250 ton) bridge cranes.
• Siding: 100,800 sq meters (1,085,000 sq ft) insulated aluminum panels; 6,503 sq meters (70,000 sq ft) plastic panels.
• Doors: There are 4 High Bay doors. Each opening is 139 meters (456 ft) high. The north entry to the transfer aisle was widened 12.2 meters (40ft) to permit entry of the Orbiter, and slotted at the center to accommodate its vertical stabilizer.

Comparisons:

• Height: VAB - 160meters (525 ft) <--> Statue of Liberty - 93 meters (305 ft)
• Volume: VAB - 3,665,013 cu meters (129,428,000 cub ft) <--> Pentagon 2,181,117 cu meters (77,025,000 cu ft).
• VAB equals 3.75 Empire State Buildings

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