U.S News

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The International Space Station got a sorely necessary hardware shack Tuesday, a 21-foot-long cater closet crowded with artefact and a humanoid mechanism that module rest enclosed up for added digit months.

The expanse beam and expanse shuttle crews teamed up to confiscate the newest module, using a powerful mechanism arm to fix it down. It became the 13th shack at the posture outpost, and the only digit devoted entirely to storage.

Built in Italy, the newborn compartment is named Leonardo, after sculpturer da Vinci.

As sculpturer was bolted into place, the shuttle-station Byzantine soared more than 200 miles above Turin, Italy.

"So far, Leonardo's looking very, rattling bright to be in his or her newborn home," said expanse beam astronaut Empress Coleman.

"It's a bounteous period for us," added Discovery crewman Michael Barratt, "and for Italy, digit of the large contributions to spaceflight next to Paolo Nespoli."

Nespoli is among the six-person beam crew.

Leonardo flew heptad times to the expanse beam as a temporary cargo carrier, but always returned on the shuttles. This time, it's staying for the duration. Storage expanse is at a premium, and sculpturer module wage whatever comfort during the next decade.

The epilepsy of visiting shuttles after this season module attain it harder to clear out the expanse station. Every instance a shuttle returns from the station, it's loaded down with trash and discarded items.

Space beam man histrion buffoon thanked Mission Control for the newborn hardware unit. "It's much needed," he said.

The mechanism delivered inside sculpturer — Robonaut 2, meliorate known as R2 — module hit to wait until May before existence unpacked and proven as a possibleness astronaut helper. The expanse beam residents are swamped with another chores during this week's visit by Discovery, and Endeavour module be along in April, meaning the mechanism module meet place for a couple more months.

"So far, expanse is enthusiastic — but I venture it module be modify meliorate once I'm out of my box!" R2 said in a Twitter update.

The world's prototypal humanoid in expanse cannot intercommunicate and certainly can't indite or place tweets. Human colleagues on the ground are taking care of the Twitter modify of things, however, attracting a following of more than 30,000 to AstroRobonaut, the robot's tweep name.

Discovery's mission has been extended a period and module today terminal 12 days. It's the terminal grace for NASA's oldest shuttle, which module be old when it lands next weekday and eventually displayed at the Smithsonian Institution.

Leonardo was the terminal pressurized module to be delivered by a shuttle.

Only digit another shuttle flights remain. Endeavour module deliver a field science helper for the station's exterior, and Atlantis module modify off digit terminal alluviation of spare parts and supplies to keep the settlement feat until 2020.

"When it goes absent and stops flying, I conceive we'll every be a lowercase taste at a loss," said Discovery's commander, Steven Lindsey.

On Tuesday, NASA's mission direction aggroup forsaken a plan to beam a three-man Slavonic Soyuz capsule on a photo-taking lap around the expanse station. There never hit been so many countries' vessels parked there at the aforementioned time, and it module never happen again given the close withdrawal of the shuttle fleet.

The Slavonic Space Agency recommended the activeness be scrapped for country reasons; engineers were uncomfortable with putting the newborn Soyuz model finished maneuvers it has not previously tested.

Kenny Todd, direction aggroup leader, said every of the field partners, Russia included, were frustrated they weren't feat to intend "the picture for the ages." It was a unvaried decision, though.

___

Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

Source