Shuttle Discovery delivers EADS SPACE equipment to the International Space Station

© NASA

August 3, 2005 In addition to the crew of seven astronauts, the US Space Shuttle Discovery also carried a very important piece of equipment to the International Space Station (ISS) – the EADS SPACE-developed External Stowage Platform 2 (ESP-2).

Fitted out with a whole collection of spare parts for the ISS, including parts for a cooling system and for the Station’s power supply, the ESP-2 is a gridded aluminium pallet measuring 4.2 metres in length and 2.2 metres in width that can hold up to three tonnes of payload. It will be permanently attached to the ISS for 15 years, mounted on the Station’s Quest airlock so that spacewalking astronauts can easily reach the equipment it contains for repairing and maintaining the station.

Installing the stowage platform ESP-2 was the principal planned task of the mission’s third spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA) in space-speak, which took place on Wednesday 3 August. (Repairing the two protruding ‘gap fillers’ between the heat-resistant tiles on the bottom of the Shuttle Discovery, damaged during the flight, was added as an emergency impromptu task to this EVA.)

Around one and a half hours into the spacewalk, at 10.30 a.m. GMT on Wednesday, the ESP-2 had been successfully manoeuvred into position bolted on to the ISS using the Station’s robotic arm, bolted on manually by astronaut Steve Robinson, and the power and heating cables connected.