Space Station Unit Is Hoisted From Shuttle

Endeavour’s astronauts overcame their first hurdle Saturday in building the international space station: hoisting the 25,000-pound Unity chamber from the shuttle cargo bay, with only an inch of clearance on either side.

An even tougher job awaits them today, when they attempt to pluck a much larger Russian station component from orbit and attach it to the U.S. piece without a direct line of sight.

The six shuttle astronauts have been chasing the component named Zarya (Russian for “sunrise”) since they rocketed into orbit Friday.

Astronaut Nancy Currie used Endeavour’s 50-foot robot arm to lift Unity, the first U.S.-made piece of the international space station. She moved the precious load slowly--so slowly it almost appeared to be motionless.

“Beautiful and delicate work,” radioed Mission Control.

Currie raised Unity about 13 feet before tilting it to an upright position above a docking ring in the bay. The next, and final, step involved latching Unity onto the ring.

The jointed shuttle arm, which also will be used for handling Zarya, has never wielded such massive objects before. The two station components are so big that Currie won’t be able to see where they meet by looking out the window; she’ll rely solely on a computerized vision system to line them up, the first “in-the-blind” docking attempt of its kind.

Unity will serve as a connecting passageway once more modules arrive over the next few years. It is 36 feet long and 15 feet in diameter, and is composed of 50,000 mechanical parts, 216 fluid and gas lines, and 121 electrical cables containing six miles of wiring.

It barely fit in Endeavour’s cargo bay; there was only an inch to spare on either side, making Currie’s job especially difficult.

The 41-foot, 44,000-pound Zarya, launched Nov. 20 from Kazakhstan, contains all the power and propulsion systems needed for the fledgling space station. Without Zarya, Unity would be a useless, empty can in orbit.

Unity cost $300 million, Zarya $240 million. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration paid for both.