Station's robot arm, lower center, extends to grab Japan's Kounotori cargo capsule. Photo Credit/NASA photo
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station welcomed the arrival of Japan’s Kounotori unmanned cargo capsule early Thursday, the first in a series of spacecraft from early corner of the world waiting their turn to dock with the orbiting science laboratory.
Kounotori was nabbed with the station’s Canadian robot arm.
NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman made the catch working from a computer control post in the station’s Cupola.
Paulo Nespoli, a European Space Agency astronaut, took over as the lead robot arm operator to berth Kounotori and its 5.3 tons of supplies with the station’s Harmony module just before 10 a.m., EST.,
The station’s crew is scheduled to open the hatches to the new capsule early Friday.
During the first week of February, Coleman and Nespoli will again use the station’s large Canadian robot arm and a smaller Japanese robot arm to extract external spare parts from Kounotori. Those activities, scheduled to unfold between Feb. 2 and 4, will also feature the initial use of DEXTRE, a Canadian robotic handyman.
Late Thursday, Russia was scheduled to launch its 41st unmanned Progress cargo capsule to the station. Progress 41, carrying more than 5,000 pounds of propellant and other supplies, is slated to make an automated docking with the station on Saturday at 9:39 p.m., EST.
The European Space Agency’s second Automated Transfer Vehicle, Johannes Kepler, is nearing a Feb. 15 launching from Kourou, French Guiana that will initiate an eight-day station voyage to the station with even more supplies.
Each of those missions will pre-stage shuttle Discovery’s long delayed final flight, an 11-day assembly mission to the station.
Discovery’s six astronauts are tentatively scheduled to lift off on Feb. 24.
The flight has been on hold since Nov. 5, while shuttle program managers troubleshoot cracks in Discovery’s external fuel tank.
When the Discovery crew arrives, the shuttle astronauts will add a stowage module and fasten an equipment platform to the outside of the station.
DEXTRE will be holding two pieces of equipment from Kounotori that will be placed on the new external stowage platform.
One of the two is a container of spare circuit breakers, the other is a device to route ammonia coolant through the rotating mechanism that turns the station’s long solar panels.