Slashdot Mirror
Discovery Prepares for Return
Kailash Nadh writes "Discovery's astronauts packed up their stuff on Friday as they prepared to undock from the international space station now that NASA has cleared the shuttle to return to Earth next week.
Their most difficult task before leaving the station was the maneuvering of a huge cargo container filled with 2 1/2 years worth of trash into the shuttle's payload bay. Once back on Earth, the items would either be disposed of or returned to researchers."
The reason they don't throw it into the atmosphere is for a variety of reasons.
They catalog everything that comes back. They weigh and measure each piece that is returned. They check it for radiation contamination (something that would spread the radiation if it was sent into the atmosphere to burn up). They do tests and experiments to see how the items faired during a long duration such as 2.5 years in space without the protection of the Earth's atmosphere from all the X-Rays, Gamma Rays, etc...
It's more than just garbage when it comes back, it turns into a science experiment in of itself. I'm sure they collect just as much data on items in space from the garbage that is brought back as they do from the experiments that used those items in the first place.
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
In Soviet Russia (this is not a joke), Space Shuttle Buran flew one unmanned orbital flight. It landed in a 57km/h crosswind and was only 1.5m off the center line of the runway. The program was cancelled after the end of Communism in Russia. Buran was destroyed a few years ago when the hanger it was being stored in in Kazakstan collapsed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Buran
http://www.buran.ru/
How frickin' hard could it be?
It's been done before. (Though that wasn't retrofitting, but design--but if you can turn a Volkswagen Beetle into a stretch limo, you can retrofit a shuttle.)
They also installed a new human research rack unit which the ISS crew will be configuring and using for years to come. the ISS is doing most of the ongoing science up there. the shuttle exists to resupply, and most importantly to FINISH the damn ISS so we can actuually get more done up there.