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NASA says International Space Station is now 'essentially' complete
The news got a bit overlooked among the hubbub of Discovery's final flight and the first humanoid robot sent into space, but the recently completed shuttle mission also marked another significant milestone: it delivered the final room to the International Space Station. While there are still some additional components to be added, the new room dubbed the "Permanent Multipurpose Module" is NASA's final contribution to the actual assembly of the station and, according to the agency, it means that it has "essentially completed" all that it had planned. The two remaining shuttle missions will just be carrying supplies and spare parts, along with a little $1.5 billion experiment called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which will be used to search for fun stuff like antimatter galaxies and dark matter.
International Space Station gets 'Man Cave,' Robonaut 2
In the narrow confines of the International Space Station, every cubic inch counts, but that won't necessarily keep NASA from building a rec room. When the Leonardo Pressurized Multipurpose Module (PMM) launches in September 2010, NASA is considering turning it into a internet-connected "man cave" isolated and quiet enough for astronauts to tweet in privacy. The connection's nothing special -- science officer T.J. Creamer compared it to that of a 14.4K modem capable of only tweets, text articles and basic browsing -- but Universe Today reports that they will also have a robotic servant, the Robonaut 2, to play with. Imagine a cramped world without fresh water or YouTube, but where you can program a state-of-the-art robot to perform monotonous tasks... We think that's a fair tradeoff, don't you? [Thanks, Robert P.]
