Teachers and 150 Students Watch HARMONY NODE 2 Launch into Space
“We chose the name Harmony because our class had to work together in harmony and we thought that would be a good name,” said Megan Littleton from Buchanan Elementary School in Baton Rouge, La
An Italian-built Node 2 named Harmony had a small gathering of very special people when it was launched, heading toward its destination above Earth to become a major part of the International Space Station in the very near future. The node 2 was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 23, 2007, gently nestled inside the Discovery space shuttle’s payload bay. Invited students and teachers from six schools around the United States watched excitedly as Discovery carried their namesake in a successful launch from the NASA launch pad.
This namesake’s story began about a year ago, when NASA sponsored a contest by the name of “Name the ISS Node 2 Challenge” being extended throughout the United States to all schools. The results demonstrated that six schools had arrived at the name “Harmony” for the node 2, with most of the students feeling that the name Harmony “represented the coming together of people from different countries with a mutual purpose of exploring space and working on science and research projects together.”
The purpose of the International Space Station’s exterior is to add new elements for its main truss that would not have been possible without the series of recent oncoming shuttle missions. The orbiting laboratory’s interior space will be increased when Discovery’s Harmony module is attached early Friday morning, November 9, 2007, by crewmembers, Lead Spacewalk and Station Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko, using the Quest airlock for the spacewalk.
Once the Harmony is attached, it will provide attachment points for the oncoming Japanese and European laboratory modules. In the updated NASA report, Lead Station Flight Director, Derek Hassman says, “It’s the gateway to international partners. As the station is configured today, there’s nowhere to put all the international partner modules until we deliver and activate Node 2. That’s the piece that makes the test possible.” In technical circles, Harmony is known as Node 2–similar to the six-sided Unity module that links the U.S. and Russian sections of the station. And Commander Pam Melroy says, “STS-120 is such a cool mission. Node 2 is the expansion of the space station’s capability to bring international laboratories up. It’s the expansion of our ability to carry additional people. It has additional life support equipment that will allow us to expand out beyond a three-person crew. It’s this big boost in capability which is really exciting.”
This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Mission Objectives, Space Agency News, Technical Concerns, The Gear to Get There. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
