ISS Resupply From Four Corners of the Globe

A quick series of global space supply trucks will arrive on the International Space Station’s loading docks early in 2011, dropping off more than 11 tons (10,000 kilograms) of food, computers, medical equipment and supplies, spare parts and research gear not to mention the requirements of everyday human life in orbit.

Signifying a multinational commitment to supporting life, work and research on the station at the start of its second decade, space trucks from Japan, Europe and Russia will launch to the station in January and February, followed quickly by the space shuttle Discovery.

After equalizing pressures between the cargo craft and the station, the crew will open hatches and begin removing supplies ranging from food and clothing for the astronauts to new computers and research equipment and supplies.

Among the new research equipment will be the Japanese Kobairo gradient hearing furnace for generating high-quality crystals from melting materials, an Amine Swingbed technology expression that will look at ways to revitalize the air on space vehicles, and the International Space Station Agricultural Camera, which will take frequent images, in visible and infrared light, of vegetated areas on the Earth.