20 May 2015

The "Italian room" on the ISS will be moved on 27 May, before being reconfigured for use with future commercial space transport systems. Watch the whole operation in streaming on AsiTV.
All change on the ISS. This time, it won't be just equipment or racks (a sort of space storage solution) that will be moving, but a whole module within the international outpost: the "Italian room" named Leonardo. The "relocation" of the Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) will take place between Tuesday 26 and Thursday 28 May, and will see the module detached from the nadir hatch of Node 1, Unity (see photo to the bottom right) and moved to its final location.
According to NASA's timeline, the onboard preparations will begin on Monday 25 and will involve ISS commander Terry Virts, Scott Kelly and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. On 26 May the crew will deactivate the PMM before the actual move on Wednesday 27 May, when the ISS robotic arm willdisconnect the module from the orbiting base and attach it to the front hatch of Node 3, Tranquillity (see photo to the bottom left) before reactivating it. The astronauts will be able to enter the module at around 3 pm on Thursday.
Next week’s operation is part of the reconfiguration of the ISSdocking stations to prepare the orbiting base for the arrival ofcommercial crew shuttles as part of Commercial Crew Development (CCDev), the NASA-funded project designed to provide transport for ISS crew after the Shuttle is retired.
Two new shuttles, Dragon produced by SpaceX and CST-100by Boeing, will soon be ferrying astronauts to the low orbit, working alongside the Russian Soyuz rocket that is currently the only "manned" system of transport to and from the ISS.
The Leonardo PMM, which was brought into orbit by the STS-133 Space Shuttle mission, has been permanently installed on the ISS since 1 March 2011. Since then, it has been acting as a storage unit for spare parts, supplies and waste material.
The module is a modified version of one of the three Multi-Purpose Logistic Modules (MPLM) named Leonardo, Raffaello and Donatello, developed by ASI as part of theMemorandum of Understanding with NASA in 1997, which saw Italy provide the US agency with the three pressurised cargo modules in exchange for the right to use the Station andflight opportunities for Italian astronauts - three short flights as members of the Space Shuttle team and one longer flight once every 5 years as members of the team onboard the international outpost.
The "relocation" operations can be seen in live streaming on the NASA Live channel on AsiTV, on Wednesday 27 May from2 pm Italian time.