YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

April 9, 2008

Return of Astronaut Takao Doi and Korea’s first astronaut

Although it might be a kind of old news, my dear junior fellow Astronaut Takao Doi who left Kennedy Space Center aboard “Endeavor” on March 11 safely returned to the earth in the highest praise from NASA for his achieving job to attach, without any mishaps, the Experiment Logistics Module-Pressurized Section (ELM-PS) of Japan’s first space facility “Kibo” to International Space Station (ISS). As I’m looking back now, only two hours after the launch, the door of Payload Bay was opened to have let Japan’s first Experiment Module “Kibo” visible in space. After that they began checking by using special sensor and robot arm if the damage was done to both wings of the fuselage and thermal tiles at the time of launch. It was Doi-san who maneuvered the robot arm at that time. It was judged then that there was no damage done to prevent their return flight.

On the third day from the launch, they entered an orbit adjustment operation from six hours prior to the docking by gradually shortening the distance to ISS orbiting around earth at the altitude 400km and then finally succeeded in docking with the front section of ISS. The tune of wakeup call on the docking day was the theme from “Godzilla” selected by Doi-san’s wife, Hitomi-san.

On March 14 they succeeded in building up ELM-PS of Japan’s Experiment Module “Kibo” inside ISS, when Doi-san maneuvered robot arm to take it out from shuttle to set it up in ISS. Thus Japan’s first manned space facility was available in space. Meanwhile, Doi-san took out ELM-PS by robot arm from payload bay of space shuttle Endeavor at 1:32am (3:32pm JST) on March 14 and then by using 15 meters long arm with six joints Doi-san finished his work of attaching ELM-PS to ISS at shortly before 4:00am (6:00pm JST). (Let’s clap our hands!)

Doi-san entered ELM-PS of Japan’s Experiment Module “Kibo” in the night of March 14 (morning of 15th JST) and attached the national flag of Japan on the wall of the chamber in the morning of 15th (afternoon of 15th JST). He entered ELM-PS from space shuttle “Endeavor” in the night of 14th (morning of 15th JST) and started working in there. The size of the national flag was 1.0 x 1.5 meters.

Setting up of the instruments in ELM-PS of “Kibo” also went smoothly. Outside of shuttle, American astronauts worked for over seven hours to fully build up Dexter of large size robot arm. Dexter looks like an upper half of the human body and is capable of the detailed workings by using two arms. It had a temporary trouble in getting powered on to have worried people concerned but was later restored. It will fully serve for assembling various parts in ISS from now.

I heard that Doi-san reported to Mr. Yasuhiro Togai (world champion of boomerang throwing) of the result of test throwing, during free time on 18th, of a paper-made boomerang specially designed for the narrow cabin of low-gravity ISS, and said that it was coming back to the thrower just like on earth; of which test idea was suggested by Mr. Togai. Since this idea was brought up on the occasion of my introducing Mr. Togai to Doi-san, I was really relieved of Doi-san’s actual testing for his not forgetting our promise. I just can’t say anything definite at this moment until I personally hear from him in details, but I have a doubt of the conclusion, “It flied exactly in the same way as on the earth”, because I think turning radius must have been too small in the narrow cabin.

On the space flight this time, Doi-san wore newly developed sportswear specially designed for space by Prof. Yoshiko Taya of Japan Women’s University, in which he exercised a training machine of bicycle type installed on Endeavor. I want to hear his impression of this exercise at the earliest opportunity.

Endeavor left ISS at approximately 7:30pm on 24th (9:30am on 25th JST). The tune sounding at wakeup time of Endeavor crew on that day was “Furusato (homeplace)” sung by a professional singer Ms. Hiroko Doi. I heard that this song was also requested by Mrs. Doi as a welcome present for the crew coming back home to the earth. I like this song very much. I was impressed of her excellent selection of the song. Endeavor boarding Astronaut Doi and other crew who accomplished sixteen days’ mission safely landed at Kennedy Space Center in the afternoon of March 26th (morning of 27th JST). (Great, just great!)

Almost in tandem with Doi-san’s return, Korea’s first astronaut headed for ISS by Russian spacecraft Soyuz. In fact, Korea officially announced in September last year that a male astronaut Mr. Ko San was selected for the first astronaut of the country and he would bring with him typical Korean food “kimchi” into ISS, which became a popular topic of conversation at that time. Besides kimchi, Kochujan (hotpepperpaste), instant noodles, fache (flower vegetable soup) and Korean ginseng (carrot) were also approved of being brought aboard.

At the news of departure, however, I began to doubt “Couldn’t it be a female?” so that I was carefully following the news and then I came to know that the first astronaut candidate Mr. Ko San violated the regulation by taking out instructional material with him from Training Center, which provoked Russian authority to demand change of astronaut. That’s how the second candidate of the female Astronaut Yi So-yeon came in to replace him. We will never know what will happen.

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.

(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)

Copyright (c) 2000 The Planetary Society of Japan. All rights reserved