Space Shuttle Discovery
The final launch of the space shuttle Discovery is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. EST today. As a sort of grand finale, NASA is showing the whole thing — from soup to nuts — online today. Go to their web site, NASA TV, and you can get a look-see at what it takes to get a space shuttle off the ground.
There will be launch commentary all afternoon. It may prove to be somewhat confusing because it’s literally a live stream of what the folks at NASA are doing, and if you’re not a rocket scientist you could get lost along the way. However, a kindly narrator will jump in once in a while to keep you on track.
Going along for the ride is R2, a waist-up portion of a humanoid robot – a prototype “robonaut” that to assist astronauts with repairs both inside and outside the space station.
According to Ron Diftler, robonaut project manager at the Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston, fully half of the replaceable components on the ISS can only be swapped out by humans in spacesuits. Preparations for spacewalks are time-consuming, and outside the air lock the work is downright dangerous.
“Our goal with robonaut is to build a robot that approaches the dexterity of a spacesuited astronaut,” Mr. Diftler says. “Once we do that, that robot has multiple roles.” Sometimes, one crew member is just floating around holding something for another, Diftler explained. “Robots will do that and never get bored or … complain.”
