Abstract
The Centrifuge Rotor (CR) is an artificial gravity generator, which is aiming at launch in 2006 as a portion of the life science experimental facility of the International Space Station (ISS). The CR rotates habitats located radially around the axis and generates centrifugal force, imposing artificial gravity of arbitrary magnitude up to 22.0 m/s2 (about 2.2 g) on the specimens housed in the habitats. The imbalance is caused by the asymmetry of two habitats opposite each other, which brings about change in the mass of the habitats as well as the quasi-static change of the CG of plants and fluids and the dynamic rodent motions in the habitats. The active mass Auto-Balancing System (ABS) is provided for automatic canceling of the above-mentioned imbalance of the rotor. This paper presents the concept and the test results of the ABS.
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest object in the earth’s orbit and currently the only environment that harbors human life outside the planet. This habitable satellite operates as a sophisticated scientific laboratory and is a complex and costly technological endeavor in expanding our extraplanetary presence. The ISS constitutes a unique living space—a sociotechnical arrangement that encloses humans and nonhumans in a highly regulated and experimental setting that anticipates the orbital order of terrestrial ways of life. This article draws upon Michel Foucault’s work on power and space to frame the ISS as a form of “heterotopia” and explore it as a site in which technologically inflected inscriptions of the human incubate distinct material and social relations. It suggests that these orbital effects configure the practices underpinning the strategic spatialization of life and its governance beyond the globe.
Using Distributed Operations to Enable Science Research on the International Space Station