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A privately funded airlock from Nanoracks will head to the International Space Station this weekend in the trunk of a SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule, adding to the orbiting laboratory’s capacity for science experiments in another milestone for the commercial space development.
The Bishop airlock module, owned by Houston-based Nanoracks, is secured within the pressureless cargo element of a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship awaiting launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Weather permitting, the automated loading mission is scheduled to lift off from Platform 39A on top of a Falcon 9 rocket at 11:39 a.m. EST (1639 GMT) on Saturday. There is a 50 to 50 chance of favorable weather for launch Saturday at Kennedy Space Center, and there is a good chance that strong winds at the Falcon 9 thruster landing area in the Atlantic Ocean will exceed limits.
In the event of bad weather in Florida or offshore, SpaceX could delay the launch to a backup opportunity at 11:17 a.m. EST (1637 GMT) Sunday.
In addition to approximately three tons of fresh food, supplies and experiments for the space station’s seven-person crew, the Dragon cargo ship will deliver the first commercial airlock module to the orbiting outpost.
“This will be the first commercial module for the International Space Station, designed and built here at Nanoracks,” said Brock Howe, the company’s project manager for the Bishop airlock. “We have been working on the airlock for about five years.”
Bigelow Aerospace’s expandable BEAM module was also developed by a commercial company, but BEAM was launched to the space station under the sponsorship of NASA.
The bell-shaped module is about the size of a small closet, measuring 6.9 feet (2.1 meters) in diameter and 5.8 feet (1.8 meters) long. Its dimensions were limited by the size of the trunk of the Dragon cargo ship, the only spacecraft capable of carrying large external payloads to the space station.
Including supporting hardware, the airlock weighs about 2,400 pounds (1,090 kilograms) at launch, according to NASA.
“If the volume (of Dragon’s trunk) were an inch larger, our airlock would be too,” said Mike Lewis, director of innovation at Nanoracks. “It’s big enough for people to get on.”
Nanoracks will use the airlock to move equipment in and out of the space station, expanding a similar capacity currently provided by an airlock within the Japanese Kibo laboratory module.
Assuming the Cargo Dragon takes off on Saturday, the SpaceX supply ship approaches the space station for docking at 11:30 am EST (1630 GMT) on Sunday, targeting a docking port on the zenith side, or Look into space, from the research lab. Harmony module.
Launching this weekend, the Dragon is the first in a new cargo pod design based on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut shuttle ship. The Enhanced Dragon, or Dragon 2, can bring more gear to the station, fly for longer periods of time, and will fall into the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Pacific, hastening the return of time-sensitive biological specimens to scientists.
Within days of arriving at the space station, the lab’s Canadian-built robotic arm will reach the Dragon’s trunk and pull the module out of the Bishop airlock. Canadarm 2 will place the Bishop airlock in an unused docking port at the end of the Tranquility module.
The astronauts will equalize the pressure between the space station and the new module, perform leak checks, and then enter the airlock to connect cables to connect the new door to the station’s power and communications systems, according to Howe.
Nanoracks officials say they expect the airlock to be ready for operations within a week after the robotic arm extracts Bishop from the Dragon’s trunk.
“The airlock is quite simple in its utility,” Lewis said in a recent interview with Spaceflight Now. “It’s just an open cup that is mounted on the space station. We use the station hatch, so a lot of the complex electronics and mechanisms are already there. “
Nanoracks and other users currently rely on the Japanese team’s airlock to transfer experiments and small satellites between the internal cabin of the station and the airless environment outside the complex.
“About five years ago, Nanoracks identified the need for customers and the market to demand a larger airlock, and one that could be opened a little more frequently than Kibo’s,” Howe said in a pre-conference conference call. launch with journalists.
The airlock on Japan’s Kibo module works with a sliding table, where astronauts can place equipment for transfer out of the space station.
“The Kibo airlock can transfer equipment the size of a microwave oven, while this new Nanoracks airlock that we have been building will be able to handle something the size of a refrigerator or freezer. So it’s roughly five times the size of the Kibo airlock. “
The internal compartment of the Bishop airlock is equipped with tracks to help astronauts locate experiments and small satellites within the module. The astronauts will then close the hatches and air will be pumped out of the airlock, allowing the station’s robotic arm to lift Bishop out of his docking location and place the module in space.
The airlock will expose the experiments to the harsh thermal and vacuum conditions of low Earth orbit, allowing Nanoracks customers to test Earth imaging cameras, space science instruments and new technologies. Astronauts could also mount small satellites inside Bishop to deploy at the end of the robot’s arm.
Bishop is designed to accommodate satellites up to 709 pounds or 321 kilograms. The Nanoracks deployer currently on the station is sized for satellites up to 220 pounds or 100 kilograms.
The Nanoracks animation below shows how the company plans to use the Bishop airlock, with the space station’s robotic arm moving the module in and out of its home at the Tranquility node. (EDITOR’S NOTE: The animation was created in 2018 and illustrates the Bishop module coming to an older and now retired version of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo vehicle.)
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The airlock is designed for at least 10 pressure cycles per year for 10 years of operations, according to Nanoracks. The cadence of Bishop’s operations will depend on customer demand, the availability of the robotic arm and the workload of the crew, authorities said.
“We also have external payload supports where we can host payloads in the airlock,” Howe said. “We can also house payloads inside the airlock while it’s still docked at (the space station). So there are many different environments that scientists can use, many different volumes and scientists can use, lots of payload power, and different data capabilities on board the airlock that will really enhance your ability to do really cool science. ISS on board ”.
The Bishop airlock is also large enough to accommodate large units of space station hardware that engineers may want to bring into the complex for inspection and repair. Using the lock in such a way could reduce the number of spacewalks astronauts need to undertake outside the station, authorities said.
So far, Nanoracks has contracted with NASA and the European Space Agency to use the Bishop airlock.
NASA previously purchased six airlock cycles, with options for four additional uses. ESA pays Nanoracks for five lock cycles.
“We are delighted to see both NASA and ESA taking advantage of the commercially available opportunities on the space station,” said Jeffrey Manber, CEO of Nanoracks.
“This is how public-private partnerships are supposed to work,” Manber said in a statement. “Through our Space Law Agreement with NASA, we have been provided access to Node 3 (the Tranquility module) where the Bishop airlock will live. We then privately financed the Bishop airlock, without using taxpayer funds for the hardware, while also providing a service at a competitive price to both the US and European governments, allowing the ISS is operating at optimal levels of productivity. “
NASA plans to use the Bishop airlock to dump trash from the space station next year. The astronauts will pile junk and unnecessary equipment inside the airlock, and then the lock will release the garbage containers into orbit to burn during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere within a few weeks or months.
“It’s not glamorous, but it’s necessary,” Lewis said.
A Japanese robotics company called GITAI also plans to test a small robotic arm inside the Bishop airlock next year.
Lewis said Nanoracks invested between $ 15 million and $ 30 million in the development of the Bishop airlock. Thales Alenia Space of Italy, which built several space station modules, fabricated the airlock pressure casing and delivered the hardware to Nanoracks in Houston for final equipment prior to launch.
“The airlock also represents, from Nanoracks, the next step towards our objectives, which are a commercial space station,” Howe said. “So this provides a lot of capabilities to enhance our engineering capabilities and our manufacturing capabilities within our company to meet those end goals of a commercial space station.”
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ EstebanClark1.
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