CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The international space station got a year’s worth of groceries in a giant shopping cart Monday, courtesy of the astronauts on NASA’s final shuttle flight.
Astronauts Sandra Magnus and Douglas Hurley used the space station’s robot arm to hoist the bus-size container out of Atlantis’ payload bay and attach it to the orbiting outpost.
The canister — 21 feet long and 15 feet across — is jammed with nearly 5 tons of household goods, enough to keep the 245-mile-high station and its inhabitants going for another year. Food alone accounted for more than 1 ton inside the Italian-built cylinder, named Raffaello.
On Sunday, flight controllers were worried that a piece of space junk might pass dangerously close today, but on Monday experts said the object — a piece of a Soviet-era satellite — would remain a safe 11 miles away.
Sunday’s docking by Atlantis moved the joined vessels into a safe orbit.
The Associated Press
