Building on a feature first demanded by the Mercury Seven, the International Space Station will have plenty of port holes to enable astronauts to look out of their very expensive tin can.
And to make sure its only money that the ISS sucks out and not astronauts, engineers across Europe are currently hard at work developing a set of windows for the Space Station capable of withstanding years of exposure to radiation and particle bombardment in space.
Besides giving astronauts a bird eye view of a billion taxpayers, the Space Station's windows will facilitate scientific observation of celestial bodies and the Earth.
The windows area, called the Cupola because of its domed, hexagonal shape, nearly 2 metres in diameter, will also house the control stand for the Space Station robotic arm in support of station robotics and assembly operations.
Initially, in August 2003, the Cupola will be mounted on the Unity connecting node already in orbit. It will later be moved to the forward port on node 3 to provide a better view.
The Cupola has six windows offering 360 deg vision plus a seventh on the top. Each window has a shutter to shade and protect the fused silica glass when the Cupola is not in use.
The industrial prime contractor for the Cupola is Alenia Aerospazio of Italy. The shuttters are built by CASA and the secondary structure by Verhaert. The meteorite and debris protection system and mechanical ground support equipment comes from Apco. SAAB will produce the harness, Lindholmen Development is in charge of the Cupola mock-up and associated ergonomics analysis, while DASA-Dornier is in charge of life support analysis.
A mock-up of the Cupola will be ready for an expert review involving ESA and NASA astronauts, starting Monday 27 September at the Lindholmen industrial test facility in G¿teborg, Sweden.
