Space station crew says 'Konnichiwa' to first Japanese cargo ship

William Atkins
Sunday, 20 September 2009 18:42

Science - Space

The H-2 Transfer Vehicle 1 (HTV-1), the first Japanese cargo ship to the International Space Station, arrived at 3:47 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), 1947 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), on Thursday, September 17, 2009, with a appreciative 'hello' from the ISS crew.


The HTV-1 ship was lifted into orbit about Earth by a Japanese H-2B rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. The launch occurred on September 10, 2009.

This first mission of a series of Japanese H-2 Transfer Vehicles is called the HTV Demonstration Flight (or HTV Technical Demonstration Vehicle).

The HTV-1 carries cargo inside of his structure for the crew of the space station (such as food, laboratory equipment, crew supplies, and other materials), along with experiments that are attached on its outside.

Two of the experiments included on HTV-1 is the Superconducting Submillimetre-Wave Limb Emission Sounder (SMILES) and the HICO-RAIDS Experiment Payload (HREP). Both are to be attached to the outside of the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) Exposed Facility.



Image: "Backdropped by a blue and white part of Earth, the unpiloted Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) approaches the International Space Station. Image courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA website)."

As the 10-meter (33-foot) long, 4.4-meter (14-foot) wide HTV-1 approached the space station from about nine meters (30 feet) away, astronaut Nicole Stott used the Canadarm2 robotic arm (from the Canadian Space Agency [CSA]) to grab it from its orbit.

During the procedure, Stott described it as a “very shiny, gold” spaceship.

Page two describes Stott's reactions to the arrival of the Japanese ship to the International Space Station.