"Astronauts will need to open docking doors to create parking spots for the space taxis: Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s Dragon capsules. The taxis will also need what are known as docking targets as well as communications systems, which will be installed over a course of seven spacewalks this year.
The SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule, which is set to launch later this year, will deliver two International Docking Adapters to allow the space taxis to attach to the ISS.The first spacewalk will be today when station commander Barry Wilmore and flight engineer Terry Virts make the first of three trips to ready cables and communications gear for those visits, with two more spacewalks planned for Tuesday and March 1.
All in all, it will be a lot of work for the ISS crew. However, the plan has always been to have a docking capability operational by 2015, and the agency remains on track, according to space station program manager Mike Suffrendini as quoted by Discovery News.
NASA expects to deliver four astronauts on each trips with the new space vehicles, which is one more than were capable of flying on Russian Soyuz capsules, allowing the crew on ISS to expand from six to seven." Space Reporter
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Good! pl
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