How The International Space Station Was Constructed | Building The Biggest | Spark

the international space station just 400 kilometers above earth this is man's outpost to space if we ever want to get beyond the moon is this man-made structure that will help us to get there 16 nations from around the world have come together to build the elements needed to complete this cosmic outpost one of the most important parts of space station historically is the fact that this was the world combined leaving earth for the very first time permanently [Music] you're in a real international part of the international space station an american robotic workstation inside a european couple operating a canadian arm and one of the things the arm is going to do is grapple the japanese transfer vehicle that will also be supplying logistics to the station with an estimated 60 billion dollars spent and behind schedule teams are working around the clock to get the essential components for the space station ready for space only if nasa's shuttle runs regularly will it be possible to complete the biggest structure ever to be built in space [Music] weighing more than 180 000 kilograms the international space station orbits the earth every 92 minutes as it travels over us at 28 000 kilometers per hour engineers and astronauts from four continents are busy building a unique research center the columbus laboratory is under construction in germany the node 3 and coppola observation deck are being built in italy and the japanese experiment module and the trusses are nearing completion at the kennedy space center in florida [Music] the shuttle is the only means to transport heavy equipment to the international space station so if the iss is to grow it's essential the shuttle runs as often as possible okay elaine our long wait may be over uh so on behalf of the many millions of people who believe so deeply in what we do good luck god speed and have a little fun up there thanks to you to the launch team and to everybody in the shuttle program the crew is go for launch [Music] go from eight engine start seven six five three engines up and burning three two one and liftoff of space shuttle discovery beginning america's new journey to the moon mars and beyond commander allen collins confirming discoveries rolling onto a course for rendezvous with the international space station standing by now for burnout and jettison of the twin solid rockets discovery jettison's external fuel tank the shuttle's destination is the international space station from the launch team down here we have a lot of smiling happy faces now that the united states is back in the crew launch business the task of supplying the hardware and the know-how to build the iss is down to a global network of space flight experts and scientists some have devoted their entire careers to making the international space station a reality the combined manpower that has gone into building launching and in space assembly of the space station to date represents the biggest construction project in history [Music] but it all comes down to this can they get the hardware and equipment still needed to complete the station safely in space and at what cost it was on february the 1st 2003 that the shuttle program suffered a catastrophic setback this is amazing it's really getting uh really bright out there in columbia houston we see your tire pressure messages and we did not copy your last communications with columbia were lost at about 8 a.m central time about the 10 10 minutes ago flock director leroy kane is now instructing controllers to uh get out their contingency procedures and i begin to follow those following the tragedy the shuttle fleet was grounded indefinitely leaving the fate of the international space station hanging in the balance to try and fly the shuttle again after a crash after we've killed people takes a lot of a lot of people working together but it really takes a lot of courage to do it as well after a seemingly textbook launch mission control were faced with a frightening reality [Music] form insulation had disengaged from the fuel tank no one knows the extent of the damage or indeed if the shuttle and its crew will be able to return home safely july 2005 earth waits as nasa prepares to inspect the damage on the shuttle the very future of the international space station hangs in the balance billions of dollars worth of space hardware sits on earth waiting for a ride into space [Music] thank you katie honey daddy's got a main phone call can you please be a little quiet honey i think if they can't land in florida they end up landing in california he and christie and his team at neptek developed a laser scanning technology that is being used to locate the damage on the belly of the space shuttle discovery the team has just arrived back from houston where they undertook the critical inorbit scans of the shuttle this is the first of about a 90-minute procedure sweeping back and forth using the laser dynamic range imager which is an infrared camera ensuring that the nose incurred no damage during discovery's eight and a half minute climb to orbit yesterday but i'm about there's a bunch of flight directors and people in the mmt who are quite happy to have 3d data and will wonder where it is next flight if they don't have it the nosecap piece of damage actually did have some laser camera data so of all the things that they were concerned about that one was presented there and that's without having having thought a lot about how to get the data i mean next flight lessons learned we'll we'll be expecting to do contingency stuff right yeah it seems like whenever they want to look at tile they look at lcs the neptek laser camera is attached to a shuttle arm which maneuvers it around the damaged craft the scans were a success and the damage on the shuttle was located the team has discovered that some of the thermal insulation panels that protect the shuttle from extreme heat on re-entry have become dislodged at launch [Music] [Music] it's funny for me because i've been working with ian christie for over 10 years he supported me on my first flight and to see those those early thoughts of the lasers and the cameras that we need to see them evolve and grow into something that made it possible to fly discovery those guys should really take a lot of pride in the creativity and the inventions they came up with chris hadfield knows all about the operation of mechanical arms as chief of robotics for nasa astronauts he's responsible for the shuttle arms bigger brother canada armed too permanently fixed to the space station canada arm 2 weighs in at 1800 kilos is 17.5 meters long and is capable of moving a mass of over 100 000 kilos when the major structural components of the station make it into space it will be canada arm two's job to lift them into position a job that requires detailed preparation and rehearsal [Music] so once you've grappled it and the state the shuttle arm has released it sure we're going to perform a roll okay like such and then we're going to move it up okay and we're going to actually i should say you are going to connect it to the uh the station okay so i will still be on on grapple fixture number three here yeah and the other end will be down on the arm so it's a pretty good reach for canadarm to get this thing there yeah it's it's at its limits do we have uh spacewalking astronauts out there giving us any sort of guidance okay so it's purely done on the robotic views okay i don't think people realize that even though they're up in microgravity things still have a mass and in order to get something moving you still have to exert such a force and at the same time in order to stop it uh you still require a great amount of force and humans just couldn't do that yeah moving something around that has a massive 20 000 kilograms and trying to move and it's like like pushing a sailboat sitting next to the dock even though it's hugely massive you can get it started but if it gets going fast you can still crush your leg against against the dock as the shuttle discovery awaits repairs on earth work continues to get the major components completed and ready for departure the man coordinating the various projects from his home in the netherlands is alan thurkettle he is responsible for work on the columbus module in germany the node 3 in italy and the coppola observation deck at kennedy space center in florida in the netherlands he's also at the helm of the design and development of the atv the european space agency's automated transfer vehicle the atv is an unmanned craft that will ultimately be responsible for supplying the international space station and the astronauts who live there with all they need to survive in space this is the automated transfer vehicle that will be coming up there to load best part of 20 tons of supplies for you it uh it's the most complicated spacecraft we've ever built in uh in europe the a million lines of code on the thing uh all sorts of subsystems combining a human spacecraft with with all the the satellites as well it's a very very complicated uh vehicle complicated it may be but across the atlantic at the kennedy space center they have a complication of their own space they've run out of it until we start flying more hardware and getting it out of the building floor space is going to be a real premium and then once we have a manifest and we know when the trusses will start flying and the building will start emptying out then we can make a better plan for how we're going to accommodate the the pressurized section and the other external facilities billions of dollars of hardware sits and waits for the decision on the shuttle it's on the floor of the high bay at kennedy space center in cape canaveral florida the elenia facility in turin italy and here at the space transportation division in bremen germany [Music] [Music] the columbus module is a 10 payload four and a half meters long laboratory where when completed astronauts will be able to conduct thousands of experiments in the weightlessness of space [Music] sent in from the united states are not compatible with the connectors in germany causing an extended delay [Music] node 3 designed to carry the life support systems for the iss node 3 will also provide valuable additional docking ports for the new structures crucial for the growth of the international space station but like the columbus module it will go nowhere until the work here is complete so what about the planning today well uh we basically have two activities the first is to check the problem that we have found yesterday that yeah on the radar beam and then we will go ahead with the installation of the emv valve so that means that the overnight shifts completed the honest installation yes they have found no problem for this night so still today we are proceeding with further to shift first yes again second shift again the hardness and the third shift also again harness hopefully if we solve this issue on the radial beam we are back on track which is very correct in italy the note 3 team are back on track but in germany the columbus module team is feeling the pressure head of systems engineering rudiger kledzik and project manager gunter brant are behind schedule a conference call has been arranged so that bernardo patty columbus project manager for the european space agency can get some answers nine weeks of delay for columbus reintegration and we have taken two more weeks of delay for payload integration so that makes 11 cool weeks and uh okay if there is a lesson learned fine we should not get any more delay if we don't learn the lesson which is to control those open works then we are going to expand this delay i understand the shuttle is grounded i understand a lot of things but i don't care at all you know what we want to which is our policy yeah i agree what you're saying yeah all the time but uh at the moment at the moment bogart schmitz and paulo are two are sitting with a list and the current schedule and see how they can put those activities into the schedule [Music] one of the first pieces of hardware destined for the space station when the shuttle resumes regular flight will be the 300 foot integrated truss structure the backbone of the iss will support a one acre span of solar panels it will provide its inhabitants with up to 110 kilowatts of power the external stowage platform is filled with hardware that will be installed on the station on future shuttle assembly missions when large truss structure components are delivered to the station to expand the station's electrical capability and to set the stage for the addition of other international modules such as the europeans columbus science laboratory and the japanese kibo module boeing managers david bethe and charles hardison oversee final assembly work on space station components at the processing facility at kennedy space center and line 42 hoisting the s5 truss to install utas bearings this morning led by lift manager jim daniel the team will use a 12-ton crane to lift the 4000-pound truss into position to insert the new bearing it's a delicate task that requires precision care and a lot of manpower this is an important modification that will allow for more experimental attachments on the truss this payload's about four thousand pounds we're going to ground the sealant to the hook but we're not going to do any metrology the objective is just to lift this payload about 12 inches we'll install the utas bearings they go on the south side of the payload we will do a trunnion inspection we'll clean the entrance set it back down torque the caps and uh resto the ceiling all right let's have a safe lift john up increase to two john up slow to four [Music] as crews on earth work three shifts a day to get equipment ready for transport in space fixing shuttle discovery is of the utmost importance and houston uh [Laughter] do you want us to press on or we could wrap this up now it's your call but working and living in space comes with its own set of rules there are things that that happen to the human body in space it's like this super accelerated test bed for the body your bones demineralize it's as if suddenly i was 75 years old getting aged like in some star trek episode where suddenly my my bones are shedding and i'm getting osteoporosis it happens to me right away in space and yet we don't understand why and when i come back it reverses we don't understand the mechanism yet here's this great laboratory where people and and any other animals we bring up with us we can study and maybe crack the the causes of osteoporosis and how to treat it and how to reverse it and if you can get up to space and do those things you can do fundamental research that is absolutely impossible to do on the surface of the earth [Music] the shuttles will be retired in 2010 as ordered by the president of the united states and will ultimately be replaced by unmanned craft like the automated transfer vehicle [Music] it's a very well proven docking system that the russians have used on the sawyers and the progress for many years very reliable good robust system and we're very happy to have it on the atv and here is the end of the mission actually of the atv returning back to earth because it burns up completely in the atmosphere yes all the trash that you've generated uh on orbit goes into the the atv and we we bring it back and burn it up so that the station doesn't get full of uh full of rubbish so the next project then is to make one of these but that doesn't burn up so you can bring me back to earth the longest serving manned spacecraft in the world is the soyuz liftoff of the soyuz rocket beginning the first expedition to the international space station and setting the stage for permanent human presence in space after the columbia space shuttle disaster of 2003 the only remaining link between earth and the space station were the russian soyuz rockets [Music] the soyuz function was to deliver replacement crews it was also the emergency escape vehicle for the inhabitants of the space station and only left for earth when another came to replace it the soyuz partner is the unmanned progress cargo spacecraft for the last two and a half years the progress craft has delivered all of the life-giving supplies needed by the beleaguered space station the one thing that i cannot do is deliver the nodes and modules needed to complete the iss that can only be done by nasa's shuttle as international partners around the globe hurried to prepare the crucial hardware for the space station astronauts steve robinson and suici naguchi step out into the vastness of space to begin their own important task assessing first hand the damage to shuttle discovery ah there we go yeah august 2005 and the future of the international space station hangs in the balance space agencies around the world can't be certain if their equipment will ever be transported into space with the damage on discovery located it's up to astronaut steve robinson and suichi naguchi to perform vital repair work good view of suichi naguchi at the end of the canadarm2 which is being operated by wendy lawrence she is maneuvering him over to the brand new control moment gyroscope near the aft bulkhead of the payload bay of discovery [Music] while steve robinson and suicinoguchi work in the cold dark vastness of space fellow astronauts thomas writer and dantani's office is the pool at the neutral buoyancy lab at over 200 feet long and 40 feet deep this pool takes over a month to fill and contains full-size replicas of the space station components it simulates as close to a spacewalk experience as is possible on earth it also gives the astronauts the opportunity to practice and rehearse difficult maintenance tasks on the replica immersed in over six million gallons of water uh good morning this morning we're going to be running the increment 13 crude thomas ryder and dan taney through the 12a cleanup eva one task giving them the familiarity for those tasks the main focus is to have them really gain as much familiarity with the umbilicals if they get anything beyond that that's all extra gravy with the drink valve right in the middle now it it tucks under the cell so it's completely out of my way and i can still get to it but you can tuck it back in under that salva yeah remember i wanted to bring actually my glasses not that my vision deteriorates but my arms are getting too short that's exactly yeah right uh astronaut dan taney trains with veteran thomas reiter thomas is scheduled to be one of the next astronauts to live and work on the space station for every hour of walking in space the astronauts need to do seven at the pool in houston [Music] tdcs has been enabled there are no alarms to impact testing copy no alarms and good morning safety divers greg your test director how did you read me this morning everyone said to ev2 copied i'm going to backup and dan and thomas i would just remind you again today make sure you use the descent line to let yourselves down make sure you clear your ears early and often [Music] once you get that out 90 degrees you can reinsert the pit pin on the lockout arm [Music] chris you might look up to the lab window hey guys we're getting an awesome video now susan is looking at looking at you out the lab window but we're also seeing reflections of all the clouds go by reflected in the lab window you know the big difference between this and working underwater in the training pool is uh is even though you're floating in the water you're still weighed down by gravity in the suit but when you get to space you are weightless and the suit is weightless so you are in fact floating around like a ping-pong ball in a cage inside your spacewalking suit it's the weirdest feeling [Music] alan thurkettle has two pressing issues to deal with severe delays with essa's columbus laboratory being fitted out in bremen germany and closer to home a critical test deployment of the atv solar array panel in the netherlands i think we should not wait jeff you'll have to uh to take the lead this morning on the uh the solar array drive test itself because i've got a meeting with uh with danielle now that i have to attend at 10 30 so i'm not quite sure but proceed without uh without me if necessary i'll join you as soon as i can the test being performed on the billion dollar atv is to make certain that the solar array panels deploy properly there have been some serious concerns about the bracket hinge system experts from germany and france have flown in to work with the dutch team the solar array panels will power the atv on its journeys to supply the space [Music] station so did you hear they're going to delay the uh the next shuttle flight until march march next year yeah that's that's a little problem for us now because with columbus and the uh the nose that have got to go up we're getting later and later and uh the scientists are getting a little bit upset that they're not getting their their work done properly the way they want it to i really hope that nasa can get the thing sorted out and get it up and flying again because it's it's very very necessary still the longer it's on the ground the more the atv is necessary [Music] and this is what scientists throughout the world are waiting for the launch of sophisticated research modules like the japanese experiment module it is the single most advanced laboratory ever destined for space the key design feature of the gem is an exposed deck that weighs over four thousand kilos here it will be possible to create experiments in the vacuum of space using a 12 meter long robotic arm manned by the astronauts it was named kibo the japanese word for hope the hope here is that after 10 years of development and sitting at nasa for two years it will finally take its place in space and if all goes well then this too is where the columbus module will call home in germany discussions continue over the american and european size discrepancies they're causing severe delays to columbus's completion we are able to crimp the american size wires with our european size pins correct although they all have the same awg size from the specification they are the same but the tolerance are so big that we have had to develop a method to to fix it into the pin and we do it by inserting small thin wires to fill the crimp up and then we and then we climb tomorrow in our telecon we have a proper story for asa i think so i think explain our delay and acting so and now we can also commit to to the test that we invested here yes but on the other side we cannot take any compromise on the quality so we have to fix it really and i told you the other day that we make the voltage drop test over such a crimp and if the voltage drop is not okay or within the specification we cannot accept that sure tomorrow we tell laser that's problem solving we solved it we are sorry we have the delay due to due to what what shall we tell them yeah and uh so we we get material which is out of specification several times and that is a problem why can't they stick to the standards sir yeah by consistency we have to teach the american how to do this one day back in america at the kennedy space center work is nearly finished on the insertion of the bearing into the truss [Music] all right if both your shackles are loose please uh be shackled lily did you say the weight was 4 000. and we had of course you know we put the flight wing on the other main thing that we had going on today was the lift of the s5 cargo element to put that split bearing on we have a bunch of vendors coming in next week to start the work on the on p5 and s5 and we still had that forward work on s5 to get that split bearing in lift should be going on now yeah so check it out let's take a look let's see i think it's 47 shuttle stuff vab administrator yeah there we are it is today we're just lifting it up uh to get that split bearing on so when they install the the device inside the trunnion that if it expands we'll be able to get the bearing off everybody wrap it up that does it uh real successful job today so and then we have to move very slowly as the international space station continues on its 160 million mile a year journey sometimes a few feet on earth can prove difficult the atv supply vehicle is being moved into position for testing keep the cradle in position [Music] stop to get to this point almost 150 international space experts analyzed over 50 000 pages of technical documentation before the design was approved [Music] okay we have finished the check okay okay thank you meanwhile back in germany columbus program manager gunter brandt has been summoned to a conference call to update alan thurkettle good afternoon ellen good afternoon gunther well i just want to give you feedback on the on the problems that we had in our harness production i think we mentioned that there was this stupid discrepancy between these american wire gorge and the european pin we did all this testing and all these goodies so now the process is okay and we proceed in crimping the harness and yesterday we checked the the situation and i think we can now commit to our our test day the 14. yes i'm not that concerned with uh with what may or may not have caused this uh this slippage gun so what uh what i'm concerned with is the slippage and uh uh the whole schedule that uh that we're trying to work on is to make sure that we finish all the power-up activities on the uh the flight hardware by the end of this year and what i absolutely need from you is confirmation that you've got workarounds that will enable that still to occur in italy another setback progress on the note 3 is halted when tape securing a heater protection pad has come loose something as simple as this on earth could lead to catastrophe in orbit if this become loose could be dangerous for the people inside because you know these eaters are critical for the operation of the node especially when is the node is not powering orbit during the transfer from the shuttle to the dirt into the station this is to prevent freezing and condensation next they need to install a vital valve to stabilize the pressure between the shuttle and node three this valve is a possibility to reach the same pressure before to open the door internally and the standard it will have also the change of the hair itself because we have an inlet line and an outer line then they can open the door and have the real houses to the to the shuttle in addition to the race to complete the various nodes and modules in time the team also faces the challenge of coordination and transport between projects which straddle international borders with a big value is the reason not that the work of integration and is then shipped back in a different configuration i i understand what you're saying and i agree that that should work but i'm not an import expert expert and i don't know how many laws i will be bending or breaking if we change something is not really easy for us because then we we have to go back to our government organization [Music] as it flies in the freezing temperatures of space the iss needs protection from the elements at kennedy space center a team of sewers put together thermal blankets which cover every single part of the structure a lot of the blankets that needed modifications um they didn't want to take the blanket off again they wanted to leave it on the station so we had to basically go up there and literally fix the thing that's where a lot of the hand sewing really came in handy on a mission in 2001 dantani and linda godwin wrapped insulation blankets around vulnerable solar array drive motors four years on steve robinson is about to undertake the single most important spacewalk in recent nasa history as he locates and attempts to remove discovery's tile gap filler that came loose during its launch looking through steve's eyes here you have to shake your head while you're up there just to focus back in on what you're doing because the the visuals absolutely fill your mind it's just overpowering it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in your life constantly like niagara pouring into your head and somehow you've got to clear all that and focus on fixing the space shuttle do they have training on how to focus on the task and not you know that's on the earth that's going by that was the biggest surprise for me was i had concentrated so much in the pool getting trained technically but when i went outside i just absolutely had to stop for a minute and just honor the world and just look at it you could not ignore the beauty of what was happening around you it is crucial that the person who's operating the arm has a very steady and a smooth ramp in and a ramp out otherwise you do induce oscillations in your robotic arm right you sure don't want to be bouncing back and forth up against the belly of the orbiter yeah especially if you have somebody on the end of it who himself he can he can do some oscillations in the arm so it's very important that you have that steady steady hand controller inputs like a worm on a hook steve robinson retrieved the loose tile gap filler from the belly of the shuttle and to everyone's relief it was a simple procedure the brakes are on here okay and i'm pulling coming out very easily beautiful very nice okay the so they must be looking into what type of things could make one of these things come loose well it's a big mystery as to why they came loose and why they don't i mean there are thousands of them how come only two of them came loose you know and and when steve reached in to grab them out on the spacewalk i mean he could just grab it and just slide it out like pulling a letter out of an envelope and we we don't know why they work loose the big question was would they have allowed us to enter the atmosphere safely or not with one of these sticking up this much out of the belly probably we would have been okay but since columbia probably is not good enough you know steve is the lead guitarist in the band i play in and so we really trusted him with the to have the the finger picking skills to yank this out of there you made it look so simple yeah and it really turned out to be simple huge relief to everybody because if it had been hard and he had to saw it off or something it would have been much less elegant but he really showed that through a huge amount of work planning on the ground you can make something that has previously been impossible into something very straightforward [Music] with the gap filler removed nasa gives the okay to return [Music] space home is so important uh getting our space season built and you know the the dreams and the opportunities that we have to go back to the moon and on to mars um you know what we're doing here is worth it and we know that there's risk but if we don't if we don't uh try it we're never going to be able to beat the risk steve robinson successfully removed the damaged tile and mission control gave the shuttle the green light to start its journey back home to earth [Music] 5.8 million mile journey is almost over all that nasa and their international partners hoped for was a safe shuttle mission to get the space station program back on track landing gear is down and locked and discovery is home with the shuttle safely home it's now all about the future the future of the international space station so frank there's one other thing i wanted to uh to show you and that's a little element called the cupola it's the only part of the station that's specifically designed for the astronauts that's really good other areas are designed for the scientists and to house all the clever systems and everything but uh the coupler is specifically for the astronauts it's your window on the world the part of the vehicle that's designed for astronauts exclusively for astronauts for you to be able to see mother earth we will also uh control the robotic arm from inside the cupola yeah yeah the robotic workstation will uh will go in there also the interior design you mean will be very nice to look at that's right yeah because i like a ferrari but at the cost of a ford or maybe like a ford at the cost of a ferrari my dad worked on the apollo yeah he was inspector that inspected the module and that type stuff when we were doing the apollo everybody was 25 to 28 years old crew cuts no goatees very studious and it was just really different you know well been a day today huh yeah [Music] it's a typical day but everything went well and that's what we try to do every day right i've got some a lot of good memories and a lot of great great work up there and that's on the station right now and i make it an effort every time i know i can get a visual of it when it flies overhead i like to go outside in the morning early in the morning go out and watch it fly overhead knowing that that's my work up there i think we did ourselves proud i think the experience in mcc really paid off they were actually using our stuff to learn stuff about the shuttle it wasn't just you know it was an important contribution and it made a difference we take the folks who built the particular element and we take the folks who are going to fly it you know put their keisters on the line and we sit down and we drink the bottle top to bottom you're in a real international part of the international space station an american robotic workstation inside a european cooper operating a canadian arm and one of the things the arm is going to do is grapple with the japanese transfer vehicle that will also be supplying logistics to the station it's a very good multicultural environment indeed it certainly is we are in such early stages of exploring space people take it for granted but in the whole history of the american space program they've launched 145 times total with people you know 145 times you're just you're just starting to understand something and yet people think it's it's very mature and so much of what we do in space is the early stages of just trying to establish right from wrong does this work well that doesn't work we don't do that when you're building a spaceship when you're building a space station if we're going to go any further out into space we've got to have a place to test all those things and without a place to test them we'd just be guessing when we leave earth [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

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Length: 45min 19sec (2719 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021