Science

Mission accomplished: STS-123 crew prepare to head home

by William Atkins

Tuesday, 25 March 2008

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Three more assembly missions are planned in 2008, four in 2009, and one in 2010.

The next mission, STS-124, will be flown inside Discovery and will involve another component of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Kibo laboratory. It is scheduled for liftoff on May 25, 2008.

The only non-ISS mission is scheduled for August 28, 2008, when the STS-125 crew will fly Atlantis to the Hubble Space Telescope for a servicing mission.

Then, STS-126 will be flown on October 16, 2008 with Endeavour. It will take the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) to the station. It is a large pressurized container used to transfer cargo to and from the space station. Supplies are brought to the station and completed experiments and waste are loaded to be returned to Earth when the astronauts return.

The last mission for 2008 will be STS-119 with its space shuttle Discovery. It will take the S6 Truss and solar arrays to the space station, beginning with its launch on December 4, 2008.

Four missions (STS-127, STS-128, STS-129, STS-130) are scheduled for 2009 and one mission (STS-132) is scheduled for 2010.

STS-131 and STS-133 are contingency logistic flight (CLF) missions that will be flown in 2010 if NASA deems them necessary.

If all goes well, the world will have a completed International Space Station by early in 2010. Unfortunately, the United States will not have any capability to send manned flights into space for about five years as the space agency retires the Space Shuttles.

Over the next five years (2010 to 2015), NASA will be developing and testing Project Constellation, the next-generation program to replace the Space Transporation System (STS) and the space shuttle fleet.

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