Jun 2 2006
From The Space Library
NASA’s KSC selected Lockheed Martin Commercial Launch Services to build the Atlas V rocket that would launch the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. The mission, scheduled for launch in fall 2009 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, would carry to Mars a six-wheeled rover, equipped with cameras mounted on a mast. Twice as long and three times as heavy as the Mars Exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity, MSL would explore Mars for two years, collecting Martian soil samples and rock cores and analyzing them for organic compounds and for environmental conditions capable of supporting microbial life, now or in the past. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which had entered Mars’s orbit in March 2006, had transmitted to Earth images that NASA scientists would use to select a landing site for MSL. MRO would serve as a communications relay for MSL after the rover landed on the Martian surface.
Chris Bergin, “Another Mars Rover—Atlas V Chosen,” NASASpaceflight.com, 2 June 2006, http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2006/06/another-mars-rover-Atlas-V-chosen (accessed 9 August 2010); Lockheed Martin, “Lockheed Martin’s Atlas V Selected To Launch Mars Science Laboratory in 2009,” news release, 6 June 2006, http://www.lockheedmartin.com/news/press_releases/2006/LOCKHEEDMARTINSATLASVSELECTEDLAUNCH.html (accessed 9 August 2010).
During a spacewalk of 6 hours and 31 minutes, which lasted longer than scheduled, ISS crew members Pavel V. Vinogradov and Jeffrey N. Williams performed several tasks to repair, retrieve, and replace hardware on the U.S. and Russian segments of the space complex. Vinogradov replaced the clogged nozzle of a valve that helped vent hydrogen into space from the Elektron oxygen-generator in the Zvezda service module. Vinogradov and Williams replaced a faulty video camera on the ISS’s Mobile Base System, which rests upon a rail car that moves up and down the station’s truss, to position the robotic arm for assembly work. The two crew members also photographed navigation antennas on the aft side of the service module that the European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) would use in the future for unpiloted docking.
Tariq Malik, “Extended EVA: Astronauts Make ISS Repairs in Long Spacewalk,” Space.com, 2 June 2006, http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/060602_exp13_eval.html (accessed 13 August 2010); NASA, “International Space Station Status Report no. SS06-026,” 2 June 2006, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/jun/HQ_SSO6026_station_stauts.html (accessed 15 April 2010).
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