{"id":919769,"date":"2026-10-07T19:56:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T19:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/919769\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T19:56:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T19:56:13","slug":"on-this-day-in-space-oct-7-2002-nasa-launches-space-shuttle-atlantis-to-deliver-backbone-of-the-iss-on-sts-112-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/919769\/","title":{"rendered":"On this day in space! Oct. 7, 2002: NASA launches space shuttle Atlantis to deliver backbone of the ISS on STS-112 mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Oct. 7, 2002, the space shuttle Atlantis<\/a> launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-112. This mission brought the Starboard 1 (S1) truss segment to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

The S1 truss is part of the backbone of the space station, and it provides structural support for the thermal control system. During the launch, a chunk of insulating foam broke off of the external tank and hit the bottom of the rocket booster, leaving a huge dent.<\/p>\n

Luckily this didn’t pose any problems for STS-112, but this was the same thing that caused the Columbia shuttle disaster<\/a> just three months later. NASA later redesigned the shuttle to prevent this problem.<\/p>\n

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\"NASA's\n<\/p>\n

NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis launches the STS-112 construction mission to the International Space Station from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39B in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Oct. 7, 2002. (Image credit: NASA)Why it mattered<\/p>\n

The 11-day mission of NASA’s STS-112 flight aboard the shuttle Atlantis delievered a key component of the International Space Station<\/a> as well as critical cart for astronauts spacewalking outside the orbiting lab.<\/p>\n

The primary goal of STS-112 was to deliver the 28,000-pound S1 truss to the station so it could be attached to the right side of the station’s central S0 truss, the core of its 360-foot (110-meter) truss backbone.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

The Boeing-built S1 truss contains a large ammonia-cooled radiator<\/a> used to keep the station from overheating (its twin is on the opposite side’s Port 1 truss), and is about 45 feet (13.7 m) It’s made mostly out of aluminum and also carries power and cooling lines between truss segments.<\/p>\n

NASA astronaut Jeffrey Ashby commanded the STS-112 mission, with Pamela Melroy<\/a> as pilot. NASA mission specialists Sandy Magnus, David Wolf, Piers Sellers<\/a> and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin rounded out the crew.<\/p>\n

\"Space\"<\/p>\n

The astronauts performed three spacewalks<\/a> on the mission to install the S1 truss, attach the plumbing lines for its radiators and install a so-called CETA cart (short for Crew Equipment Translation Aid) on the truss rail system so future spacewalkers could use it to move gear around.<\/p>\n

The mission also delivered about 1,800 pounds of cargo to the station and returned about the same amount of stuff back to Earth.<\/p>\n

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive<\/a> and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

\nOn this day in space! Oct. 6, 1992: US and Russia sign human spaceflight agreement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Oct. 7, 2002, the space shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-112. This mission…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":919770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-919769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/919770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}