A New Role for the Space Shuttle: Deliveries and Pickups The space shuttle has seen the future of space travel, and it looks like
a delivery service. This galactic UPS debuted in 1994, when veteran
cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev hitched a ride aboard the 18th Discovery
mission. He was NASA's first Russian passenger. Krikalev's eight-day
spin was the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the U,S,-Russian Mir partnership,
and ever since, U.S. space shuttles have been taking things, and people,
into space with an eye to leaving them behind.
Whether the cargo is
Mir-bound astronauts or ISS hardware on a test run, every trip to the
stars has a price tag attached.
This is why the U.S. shuttle
program, which boasts Earth's most durable and successful space fleet, has
spent so much time toting other countries' stuff. For one
Discovery payload, the Japanese supplied a five-foot robotic arm earmarked
for the International Space Station, and the Germans footed the
ozone-analyzing satellite that trailed Discovery in orbit. The Canadians
even chipped in with an astronaut.
With the Cold War over, nothing brings old rivals together faster than tight
budgets.
The next mission -- Space Shuttle Discovery -- launches
October 29, 1998. The astronauts will conduct a variety of space
experiments. However, it's not so much what they will be doing but who'll be
doing it. One of the crew members is John Glenn, the first American to
orbit Earth, who last visited space several decades ago.
— Frank Pellegrini
