An Important Day in the History of Manned Space Exploration
by Liam Bailey
2008-03-15 19:10:00 **news**
We are in the middle of what will be remembered as one of the most important periods in the history of space exploration. Saturday 15 March 2008 will see astronauts from the space shuttle Endeavour exit the space-station in a spacewalk to attach two 11 foot arms to Dextre, the massive robot taken to the space-station by Endeavour, that will assist in future space walks in the continuation of the space-stations development, and eventually could take away the need for some space-walks therefore reducing the risk to the astronauts.
It is only going ahead today because the brains at NASA instructed the astronauts to hook the space-stations mechanical grab onto Dextre and use the grab to conduct power to the robot, after failure to change the cable's route after a change in the mounting of the robot, led to the cable failing to conduct power to the robot. Without any power to heat the robot's joints today's mission wouldn't have been able to go ahead, and the entire mission would have been an almost complete failure.
Also aboard Endeavour was a fourteen foot storage container, which will be filled with a Japanese laboratory worth billions of dollars. The laboratory equipment will be taken to the space-station by space-shuttle discovery when it makes its trip to the station in May.
Why I say this will be forever remembered as a crucial time in the history of space exploration is because of the hope that the space station will become a forward launching point for future missions that could allow us to launched manned space-shuttles further into space than has previously been possible. Then who knows, maybe build more space-stations that will allow us to travel even further into space; to boldly go where no one has gone before.
The other good news about Endeavour is that its heat shield survived the exit-trip without too much damage, and has been officially cleared for re-entry March 25. But what I don't get is why they didn't send a couple of heat-shields up with endeavour to store in the space station in case of any problems with the technology in future, or even to replace heat-shields for re-entry on every mission -- mind you I am not up in these matters, maybe the shields are too large or something.
