THE JOURNEY CONTINUES by Walter Cugno

In the early 1980s, NASA was thinking of building an American space station to conduct scientific experiments and match the Soviet MIR space station. In 1984, president Ronald Reagan officially announced the project and gave other nations the opportunity to join in the program. It was the birth of the International Space Station (ISS)—initially called Freedom. Our ideas, to which I had the honor of contributing personally, suddenly seemed feasible, and ESA studied the idea of building a European orbital system called Columbus “Manned Free Flyer,” composed of a pressurized and service module. The proposed Columbus would be able to detach from the American space station and orbit in stand-alone mode to create an independent European space structure. The Columbus system was designed with the ability to grow with the addition of other modules. This expansion capability meant that Columbus would have the potential to become a truly independent European mini space station in Low Earth Orbit. However, things did not go as planned. The fact that the major European nations were not in sync with the main objectives of the project, coupled with ever-changing political ambitions and unstable financial situations, made it impossible to gain consensus on a space station configuration until finally, an extremely scaled-down version of Columbus was approved. This version reduced the proposed expandable infrastructure to a single permanently attached module called Columbus Laboratory. Along with this, there was the provision to build five one-shot cargo ships called ATVs, or Automated Transfer Vehicles.

The International Space Station today represents one of humanity’s biggest technological challenges, some say it is second only to construction of the pyramids in Egypt. My professional history is linked to human spaceflight and in particular to the ISS. Our destinies crossed in 1997, when I was appointed Program Manager of Node 2 – Harmony and Node 3 – Tranquility—projects newly acquired by our company. In 1998, I was in Houston working closely with NASA and Boeing’s teams to define the architecture of the ISS and therefore of the Nodes. I had the honor of meeting and working with many of the astronauts with whom, even today, I share the incredible story of the ISS.

During the same time, while working with ESA to build the European contribution to the ISS, Italy decided to continue its own national strategy of cooperating in space with the United States. The Italian Space Agency (ASI) negotiated a barter agreement, which consisted of Italy constructing three Multi-Purpose Logistic Modules (MPLMs) in trade for Italian astronaut and science payload access to space. The MLPMs were three pressurized modules built in Italy and provided to NASA to be utilized by the Space Shuttle to service the ISS. The modules were named after three Italian historical icons: Leonardo, Donatello, and Raffaello. Cumulatively, the modules eventually flew 12 times in space. Moreover, in 2010, the MPLM Leonardo was transformed into the Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) that was permanently attached to the ISS to be used for stowage. The MPLM program was very successful and allowed Italy to produce, provide, and support these technological gems to NASA. In return, Italy obtained spaceflights for Italian astronauts, along with astronaut time and physical space on the ISS for Italian experiments that included sending and returning experiment payloads. It was thanks to one of these flight opportunities that Paolo flew in 2007 on the Space Shuttle Discovery, mission STS-120, and then again to the ISS in 2017, when he was able to take some of the incredible pictures you see in this book.

All of this space habitat design and construction helped Italy acquire the best technologies and methodologies to build the structures of spacecraft walls and other space modules, assembling them with sophisticated aluminum panels—intelligently carved, conveniently shaped, and joined together. Looking at the outside walls of the pressurized modules, it is difficult to appreciate that they have been built starting from solid aluminum blocks weighing 2,000 kilograms (4,400 lbs) and 10 centimeters thick (4 in). These aluminum blocks have their exterior sides carved out by high-tech numerically-controlled, laser-guided cutters, so that what is left is a wall of just 3 millimeters of thickness (0.12 in) surrounded by a lattice of ribs that gives the structure the incredible mechanical strength needed to withstand the forces of launch, the thermal stresses of space, and the space station’s internal pressure. Once the carving is complete, just about 4 percent of the original mass is left, so that the final piece has an incredible mechanical

strength-to-weight ratio. Then, the aluminum blocks are passed through a special machine that imparts to them an exact curve so that several blocks can be joined together to form the modules. The final modules are essentially big cylinders of 5 meters (16.4 ft) in diameter. Of course, in forming the cylinders, the problem was discovered that traditional welding techniques would induce flaws in the panels that would not tolerate the stresses of space and add weight. Therefore, a different welding technique called friction welding was used. Today in Turin, we have equipment that can achieve the biggest friction welds in Europe. This technology, along with many others that we had to invent, acquire and master, allowed us to be able to build several other “space jewels,” such as the Node 2 and Node 3—modules that have four additional hatches each—and the Cupola, with seven huge windows. The design of these modules gave our structural engineers an enormous challenge and endless sleepless nights before they could find adequate solutions to meet the requirements.

Through the years, the ESA entrusted Thales Alenia Space and its predecessors with building the modules Columbus, Cupola, Node 3, and ATV. The Italian Space Agency assigned us construction of the MPLM modules, Node 2, and several industrial collaborations. These collaborations include the cargo ship Cignus with Northrop Grumman. As of today, Thales Alenia Space developed and produced almost 50 percent of the pressurized volume of the ISS including pressurized cargo systems, inhabited permanent systems, complex functional blocks, and highly technological modules like the Cupola, which, by the way, has allowed astronauts to produce unique Earth views. The latest arrival in the series is Bishop, a commercial airlock used for launching Cubesats (small, deployable satellites) from the ISS, produced for the American company, Nanoracks.

Many programs were the result of the determination, competence, and strong motivation of the heirs of the engineering group established in 1975 with the Spacelab program. With its professional maturity, members of this group have been a source of inspiration and influence on numerous young men and women. In turn, these following generations of engineers and technicians collaborated over the years to create a mix of rare competence and capabilities almost unique in the field of space infrastructure and human spaceflight.

For someone like me, having been born in a small town in the Piedmont valley, the son of a modest family, to find myself living and breathing the everyday spirit of these technological challenges is more than any impossible dream I had as a teenager. To meet the people who made history and be greeted as an equal colleague, enter in the famous NASA centers where space history was written: Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where you can still hear the echoes of “Failure is not an option;” Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where you can feel Von Braun’s spirit; Kennedy Space Center, where you can feel the Apollo astronauts; and not to mention the various Russian space centers—even for me, it is a dream come true that I still can’t quite grasp. Our work with Spacelab began Italy’s contribution to human spaceflight. Spacelab led to our work with the Space Shuttle and the ISS, which represent today‘s state of the art in spaceflight.

In the near future, the ISS program will end, and books like this will allow us to remember what we were able to achieve—both from a technical, political, and human point of view. We are not stopping, though; the “young” group of engineers is still thinking and preparing ideas and plans to go back to the Moon and leap to Mars. The journey continues…

BETWEEN SAYING AND DOING LIES THE OCEAN

by Paolo Nespoli

Today, flying in space is an exceptional undertaking in many aspects. If you are a millionaire, a politician, or a famous actor, and have passion, time, and courage, it may take you a couple of years or less before you can experience what it means to get thrown out of Earth’s atmosphere while riding a mini atomic bomb, and then enjoy the quietness of Earth Orbit’s microgravity environment. But if you do not belong to any of those categories, your only chance is to become one of the professional astronauts of a national space agency and hope they’ll eventually assign you to one of their space missions. This is easier said than done. In fact, even though I was bitten by the space bug while growing up in Italy and watching the Apollo astronauts landing on the moon, I understood the impossibility of it and forgot about it. Later on, already grown up and fully involved in a different career, I reconsidered my childhood dream and decided to give it a serious go. It took me 15 years and three tries before I got selected. I’m not quite sure what made the difference in last my successful attempt. Strangely enough, I feel photography put me in the right place at the right time, as it had on a couple of previous occasions.

After being selected as an astronaut, it took another nine years before I actually flew in space: a 12-day Space Shuttle Mission for the construction of the International Space Station (ISS). It was a very complex mission made even more difficult due to a major malfunction that we managed to solve with the help of Mission Control. Because of the issue we encountered, our mission got extended three additional days, the last of which allowed us to have a bit of time off. Finally, there I was, with my camera at the Shuttle windows, looking at Earth from 400 km (250 mi), spinning around it at about 28,000 km/hr (17,500 mi/hr)—that’s almost 8 km/sec (5 mi/sec), watching four seasons, five continents, a day, and a night, passing under me every hour and a half. Absolutely incredible!

After this flight I was surprised to quickly be assigned to a long duration mission to the ISS. It took two years of training and several trips around the world to finally go back to the ISS and feel again the absence of gravity. On this trip to the ISS, I flew on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Our work went along fine, and after 139 days in space, it was time to come home. Fate had it that at that moment a Space Shuttle was docked to the station. Normally, in this situation, Houston would have delayed our departure because we were an invaluable resource in supporting the hectic schedule of the shuttle crew, and also to minimize the risk of us colliding with the shuttle—possibly causing a catastrophic failure.

This, though, was one of the last chances to have all at once an American Space Shuttle, a European cargo ship, and two Russian spacecraft (a cargo ship and a crew ship) all docked with the completed ISS—the equivalent of a Royal Flush on a poker table in Las Vegas. It was decided to attempt an unusual critical maneuver of making the Soyuz stop midway through the departure sequence and have the crew take pictures of the whole stack of vehicles. Once again, photography saw me in the right place at the right time. I was the one who got the task of taking those pictures while Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev manually piloted the Russian Soyuz spacecraft and American astronaut Cady Coleman kept tabs on the timeline. Houston turned the station in an unusual attitude and had us undock at the right moment to have about 30 minutes of sunlight on the station. NASA flight controllers even made the ISS execute a flip in space so that we could take portraits from different sides. It was special and incredible, and I was the one taking the pictures.