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

William Atkins
Sunday, 20 September 2009 18:42

Science - Space

According to the September 17, 2009 MSNBC article “Space station welcomes Japanese cargo ship,” Stott also reported back to mission controllers back on Earth: "It just looks fantastic. We're going to get some pictures and some video, full coverage of this."

She added, "We had an amazing time doing this, we're so happy to have this beautiful vehicle here. We look very [much] forward to going in tomorrow and finding all the supplies that I'm sure you've stored there for us." [MSNBC]

As the U.S. space shuttles are prepared for retirement, fleets of cargo ships will resupply the International Space Station with materials, supplies, and hardware.

Among these fleets are the Russia’s Progress cargo ships, the European Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATVs), and these new Japanese HTVs.

The Japanese HTVs were built for the Japanese space agency Japan Aerospacae Exploration Agency (JAXA). The HTV-1 cost about $220 million to build, with an additional $680 million in development costs since 1997 for the entire project.

Each HTV has a cargo capacity of about six tons. However, this first flight for HTV-1 only carried about 4.5 to 5.0 tons to accommodate extra propellant and batteries in case a problem arose during its first flight to space.

The JAXA website of the HTV/H-2B project contains additional information on the mission and the project, in general.