A Russian docking port arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday, becoming the 11th module to be hooked up to the orbiting outpost.
The new room, named Poisk -- a Russian word for "search" -- will double as a small research laboratory and docking port for Russian Soyuz and Progress vehicles, and possibly Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicles, which are designed to berth on Russian docking nodes. Poisk is nearly identical to Russia's Pirs docking compartment, which arrived in 2001.
With the new docking port, the station how has parking space for five ships, including one for the space shuttles and Japanese cargo ships and four for Russian and European vessels. With six full-time crewmembers on the station, two of the berthing ports are occupied with Soyuz capsules which serve as the crew's emergency escape vehicles.
With the extra docking port, NASA and the station partners will have more flexibility to plan and carry out resupply runs, which will become more critical when the shuttle fleet is retired next year.
(New Russian module named Poisk (PAW'-eesk) arrives at the space station. Credit: NASA)
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