Just three hours later, though, the mood turned dramatically. Meanwhile, on Russian social media an army of online trolls went into overdrive to trumpet the success. “Starting today, foreigners are learning to pronounce a new Russian word-Nauka,” declared Roskosmos head Dmitry Rogozin. After eight days of mostly silence from the Russian space agency Roskosmos about Nauka’s trouble-laden trek to its destination and nerve-racking final approach to the ISS the successful docking was met with fanfare in Moscow. The new module launched to the station on a Proton-M rocket on July 21. Nauka also adds more sleeping space for the cosmonauts and a new toilet hooked up to a sophisticated water-recycling system. All the other ISS partners largely completed construction of their facilities years ago.Īs its name suggests, Nauka is designed as a laboratory, complete with a workshop, a glovebox for experiments, attachment points for exterior payloads, an airlock, and a European-built robotic arm that will allow cosmonauts to install equipment outside the station-the first such capability on the Russian segment. It was the first expansion of the Russian segment of the station in more than a decade. Last month, something that long-time observers of the space program thought might never happen actually took place 450 kilometers above Earth: Russia’s 20-ton Nauka (“Science”) module successfully docked to the International Space Station.
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