Astronaut From Va. Rehearses Joining Module to Space Station
By A.J. Hostetler, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
Jun. 28–HOUSTON Standing in NASA’s IMAX-like training facility, Leland Melvin pays no heed as an image of the Chesapeake Bay as seen from space passes overhead in the darkened dome.
Melvin, the Lynchburg, Va., native who played football at the University of Richmond before joining NASA, will serve as a mission specialist aboard the shuttle Atlantis. The launch is schedFind a profile of Leland Melvin and a multimedia slideshow at inRich.comuled for Dec. 6.
While holding an instruction manual, Melvin stands on a platform shoulder-to-shoulder with crewmate Stan Love. Their hands scramble over joysticks, levers and buttons on a computer board mounted in a full-sized model of a shuttle’s aft flight deck.
Images of the International Space Station and the shuttle fly by, projected onto the domed ceiling. A view of a robotic arm looms near. The duo continue their choreographed maneuvers to simulate using the arm to store a boom alongside the shuttle after inspecting the spacecraft’s heat shield.
Grinning, Melvin turns from the computer board and leaves the simulation training for a moment.
“It’s the ultimate video game,” Melvin said.
“I use a lot of the [visualization] skills that I learned when I was playing football at Richmond” in the 1980s under coach Dal Shealy. “Football, from the standpoint of teamwork, is invaluable to what we’re doing.”
He points at a computer screen. Outlined in green is the path he must follow to wield the boom with a robotic arm to move equipment and spacewalkers in near-Earth orbit. Slowly, he moves the arm to overlap its screen twin. He will spend more time simulating these maneuvers until just before launch.
“What we do when we’re not in a ‘sim,’ we have the same software on our laptops. So I can be anywhere and go through the motions of flying the arms — see the station, move the arm, do all of those motions. At some point, it becomes rote memory,” Melvin said. “You just practice so many times you know it.”
Melvin’s main duty, scheduled for the fourth day of the flight, is to manipulate the nearly 58 foot-long space station arm and remove a European laboratory module from the space shuttle and attach it to the station.
“That’s the biggest job I have,” Melvin said.
The Columbus laboratory module, the cornerstone of the European Space Agency’s contributions to the space station, will allow scientists to conduct experiments in materials sci ence, life science and fluid physics.
Its delivery will take hours. First, Melvin must move the arm about 6 inches per second as it carries German astronaut Hans Schlegel in the mission’s first spacewalk. He will spend 60 to 90 minutes flying Schlegel to different parts of the shuttle bay. Melvin practices for the spacewalk with Schlegel in a buoyancy pool and in computer simulation.
“You’re trying to get them in a position where they can work the easiest in space,” Melvin said. “When we’re training and I can anticipate exactly where Hans [Schlegel] wants to be . . . you’re in sync mentally and you know that even before he says, ‘OK, move me 10 centimeters port,’ I already have him there,” he said. “It’s like when a quarterback and a wide receiver are in sync.”
After assisting Schlegel, Melvin will work the arm to grab the 13-ton cylindrical module. Moving it from the shuttle bay and into place on the station will take about 2 1/2 hours.
The station arm, called Canadarm2, is one of Canada’s contributions to the space station. The arm has seven motorized joints allowing it to handle large payloads and assist with docking the space shuttle. Each end has a hand that can grasp an anchor on the space station. By flipping end-over-end, the station arm can move around like an inchworm.
“It’s basically how the arm can grab onto things and move them,” Melvin said.
Melvin and Love spend hours without a break in their dome training sessions. They hunch over the computer board to avoid hitting their heads on the cockpit’s ceiling, lightly touching the computer screens and gesturing to each other to avoid unnecessary chatter. The few feet of space they share is about the size of a small office cubicle.
The work is mentally challenging, Melvin said, but training on the ground at Johnson Space Center is more physically taxing than in space because of gravity. Although Melvin is the primary specialist assigned to the space station arm, he and Love cross-train on the station and shuttle arms so they can switch duties if either tires.
“These [spacewalks] last six hours. And working the robotic arm for six hours can be rather fatiguing. . . . You always have to check yourself, that ‘OK, I’m about to move this person 5 inches . . . if I run him into this structure, it could be a very, very bad day for everyone.’”
Melvin’s other mission duties include serving as medical officer and treating any space-sick astronauts. His work as one of the mission photographers will start as soon as the shuttle reaches orbit.
“As soon as we get there, I’ve got to unbuckle, take off my helmet and my gloves. Hans is going to bring the still camera . . . and will hand me a video camera to shoot video footage of the [fuel] tank to make sure the tank has no dings” in the insulating foam that could disturb the shuttle’s return to Earth.
“I’ll be doing that right off the bat.” Contact A.J. Hostetler at (804) 649-6355 or ahostetler@timesdispatch.com.
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Copyright (c) 2007, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
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