Space
Japanese Spacecraft Successfully Docks at ISS
Brooke Miller
First Posted: Jul 28, 2012 03:34 PM EDT
An unmanned Japanese freighter successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS). Expedition 32 Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide used the International Space Station's Canadarm2 robotic arm to install the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) H-II Transfer vehicle, or HTV-3 to its docking port on the Earth facing side of the harmony node.
This is the third series of the Japanese spaceship to arrive successfully at the ISS. The cargo includes food and clothing for the astronauts, an aquatic habitat experiment, a remote-controlled Earth-observation camera for environmental studies, a catalytic reactor for the station's water regeneration system and a Japanese cooling water recirculation pump.
"The docking went quite smoothly. We were nervous because (the unit) was made of domestically built equipment but we were glad Mr Hoshide and other crew members captured it and will continue operations," Yukio Koyari, a project manager, said at the agency's Tsukuba Space Centre.
The vehicle is scheduled to separate from the station on September 7. This docking follows an unsuccessful attempt at re-docking Monday by an unmanned Russian Progress spacecraft. The Progress 47 vehicle, which had already been at the space station, was undocked to test the new docking system.
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First Posted: Jul 28, 2012 03:34 PM EDT
An unmanned Japanese freighter successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS). Expedition 32 Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide used the International Space Station's Canadarm2 robotic arm to install the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) H-II Transfer vehicle, or HTV-3 to its docking port on the Earth facing side of the harmony node.
This is the third series of the Japanese spaceship to arrive successfully at the ISS. The cargo includes food and clothing for the astronauts, an aquatic habitat experiment, a remote-controlled Earth-observation camera for environmental studies, a catalytic reactor for the station's water regeneration system and a Japanese cooling water recirculation pump.
"The docking went quite smoothly. We were nervous because (the unit) was made of domestically built equipment but we were glad Mr Hoshide and other crew members captured it and will continue operations," Yukio Koyari, a project manager, said at the agency's Tsukuba Space Centre.
The vehicle is scheduled to separate from the station on September 7. This docking follows an unsuccessful attempt at re-docking Monday by an unmanned Russian Progress spacecraft. The Progress 47 vehicle, which had already been at the space station, was undocked to test the new docking system.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone