Space station astronauts' latest challenge: How to park space taxis
Space station commander Scott Kelly and flight engineer Kjell Lindgren conducted their first ever spacewalk Wednesday (but the US 32nd), a six and a half hour mission to conduct routine maintenance and prepare the station for commercial space taxi docking.
NASA originally planned to complete construction of two 鈥渂erthing slips鈥� to allow parking of Boeing and SpaceX commercial space taxis by the end of the year. However, one docking adapter was lost in June, which could take up to 14 months to replace.
Station operations integration manager, Kenneth Todd, admitted 鈥渨e haven鈥檛 been able to do everything we hoped we would.鈥�
Boeing and SpaceX won鈥檛 begin crewed capsule testing until 2017, so NASA still believes the docking ports will be ready in time as the electric cable installation should be completed in early 2016.
Mr. Kelly and Mr. Lindgren also began installation of a thermal cover on the 鈥淎lpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector, a multinational experiment intended to shed light on dark matter, cosmic rays and other high-energy phenomena,鈥� a measure scientists believe will extend the instrument鈥檚 life.
According to CNN, Kelly and Lindgren will perform a second spacewalk November 6, 鈥渢wo days after the of continuous human presence outside the space station.鈥�
NASA discontinued it's own space shuttle in 2011, despite objections from many in the space program. Without a shuttle of its own, NASA has relied on the Russian space program to ferry astronauts to and from the space station.聽In September 2014, the space agency cut a $6.8 billion deal with SpaceX and Boeing to serve as NASA's space taxi service.聽
Outsourcing NASA鈥檚 short-range transportation needs to private industry frees space agency resources up to pioneer more ambitious projects, astrophysicist聽Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.,聽told 海角大神 last year.
"It makes sense to me that NASA鈥檚 role should be at the frontier. Trucking astronauts and their food and supplies and so on is no longer the frontier,鈥� he said. 鈥淣ASA astronauts shouldn鈥檛 be truck drivers. That鈥檚 not what they鈥檙e for. They鈥檙e for being the first people on Mars, or on an asteroid.鈥�
