Discovery Prepares for Return 189
Kailash Nadh writes "Discovery's astronauts packed up their stuff on Friday as they prepared to undock from the international space station now that NASA has cleared the shuttle to return to Earth next week.
Their most difficult task before leaving the station was the maneuvering of a huge cargo container filled with 2 1/2 years worth of trash into the shuttle's payload bay. Once back on Earth, the items would either be disposed of or returned to researchers."
Re:Oh boy, here we go (Score:4, Informative)
They catalog everything that comes back. They weigh and measure each piece that is returned. They check it for radiation contamination (something that would spread the radiation if it was sent into the atmosphere to burn up). They do tests and experiments to see how the items faired during a long duration such as 2.5 years in space without the protection of the Earth's atmosphere from all the X-Rays, Gamma Rays, etc...
It's more than just garbage when it comes back, it turns into a science experiment in of itself. I'm sure they collect just as much data on items in space from the garbage that is brought back as they do from the experiments that used those items in the first place.
Re:Unmanned flights (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Buran [wikipedia.org]
http://www.buran.ru/ [buran.ru]
Re:Unmanned flights (Score:2, Informative)
It's been done before [wikipedia.org]. (Though that wasn't retrofitting, but design--but if you can turn a Volkswagen Beetle into a stretch limo, you can retrofit a shuttle.)
Re:Why is this filed under 'Science' (Score:2, Informative)