WORF finally in space
by Philip Chien
NASA has flown WORF to the International Space Station. But it may not be the WORF you’re thinking about.
The original plans for NASA's space station Freedom called for an orbit that hugged the Earth's equator, not traveling any further North or South than 28.5 degrees latitude. When NASA decided to ask Russia to join the International Space Station program the decision was made to change the orbit to 51.6 degrees to accommodate the Russian launch vehicles. There’s a myth that this would reduce the number of launches and reduce the cost of the space station because Russia could supply many of the space station’s components. However the reality is the new orbit takes more energy to reach and it has more than doubled the number of required American launches and increased the costs.
The decision to change the orbit was made solely for political purposes, but it did result in a couple of benefits. The new orbit travels over 95% of the populated areas of the world. Only extreme latitudes like Alaska, Scandinavia and far northern Russia and Canada are not underneath the space station's orbit. From an educational perspective it means most of the world's population can go outside and see the space station go overhead. From the space station's perspective it means astronauts can observe most of the Earth from orbit.
Scientists wanted a high quality optical quality window for scientific research and enough money was scraped together to make it happen. The window is 20 inch (50.8 cm) diameter fused silica glass. It's part of the US Laboratory which was delivered to the space station in February 2001. The window is the highest quality piece of glass ever put on a spacecraft with people onboard. An optics physicist would say that the peak-to-valley wavefront variation is less than one 10th of a wavelength at 6328 Angstroms. Anybody else would just say it's a pretty fantastic window.
The window has four layers. There's an outer layer which protects the window from space debris, two pressure-tight panes (one primary and one redundant for safety) and an internal pane to protect the window. The panes can be replaced if they're damaged, but engineers hope they never have to replace the pressure panes unless absolutely necessary. Appropriately 'vulcanized' rubber seals are used to keep everything pressure tight. There's a mechanical cover that looks like a big frying pan on a hinge. It operates similar to storm shutters on older houses which can be closed from the inside with a crank.
A window is great for taking pretty photos and many astronauts have spent much of their off-duty time taking photos of the Earth. From 2001 to 2010 the window was in an empty location, waiting for a closet-size scientific rack to maximize the science which could be performed. Somebody came up with the name Window Observational Research Facility - or WORF for short. In the “Star Trek” universe Worf is the Klingon who joined Starfleet in “The Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine.” Worf, played by actor Michael Dorn, was one of the most popular characters in the “Star Trek” universe. The official WORF logo includes the name in the Klingon font. The scientist in charge of WORF is Dean Eppler, so he's been nicknamed "Mogh" - the father of Worf!
The WORF rack was originally supposed to launch in 2001 but delays to both Russian and American components pushed that target back two years. WORF was ready to go and scheduled to launch into space in March 2003 on the STS-114 space shuttle mission. However the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia on the STS-107 mission put all shuttle flights on hold for two years. Because of the long down-time between missions NASA made the decision to remove some of the science racks originally planned for STS-114, including WORF, and replace them with badly needed logistics. Other science racks and logistics requirements had higher priorities so WORF remained earth-bound for seven additional years.
The STS-131 mission, with WORF onboard, launched on April 5, 2010 and the space shuttle Discovery docked to the space station two days later. While some of the astronauts concentrated on the mission’s three spacewalks, others concentrated on moving tons of supplies, including WORF, from the shuttle over to the space station. On April 10 at 12:46 am CDT Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi told mission control that WORF was installed into the U.S. Laboratory module.
The WORF rack has shelves for the various science instruments and provides Ethernet computer connections, video, power, and other systems needed to send the data from the experiments to the ground. WORF is the only scientific rack an astronaut can actually crawl into and astronauts can make their own Earth observations using cameras, binoculars, or just their eyes. One of the favorite off-duty activities for astronauts is to just view the Earth or watch the seasons change. Most take photos of their hometowns. Hundreds of thousands of photos have been taken and scientists on the ground catalog the astronaut photos.
The WORF may not be as big as the transparent aluminum panoramic windows or force fields in "Star Trek" but scientists who observe the Earth are ecstatic that it's on the ISS.
Worf photo provided by Paramount pictures. Michael Dorn photo copyright 2007 Philip Chien. Other photos from NASA and the author's collection.
Links
The Heaven’s Above website will calculate the location of the International Space Station (and thousands of other satellites) and when it's visible over any location on Earth.
The Gateway to Astronaut Photography website has hundreds of thousands of photos of the Earth taken by astronauts in space.
Select from hundreds of Star Trek
products at Amazon.com
NASA's sparse website with information about WORF.
A video shows how WORF works.
The educational EarthKam experiment which uses WORF.
About the author
Philip Chien has been a "Star Trek" fan since the original series. He was one of the only reporters who actually covered Columbia's final mission, and one of the last people to talk to Columbia's crew before the accident. His website www.sts107.info has more information on the mission and his book, "Columbia - Final Voyage."
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