Design
Tranquility was built within the ESA-NASA ISS bartering system. ESA committed to build and fund both Harmony and Tranquility as well as the ATV in order to use NASA ISS facitilies, fly astronauts on the Shuttle and for other ISS services. ESA teamed up with the Italian Space Agency ASI to build both Harmony and Tranquility at Thales Alenia Space in Turin.
Tranquility provides six berthing locations with power, data and commanding, thermal and environmental control, and crew access for more attached habitable volumes or for crew transportation vehicles or stowage, or an appropriate combination of all of these. One of the berthing locations is used by Cupola, which houses a Robotic Work Station inside it to assist in the assembly/maintenance of the ISS as well as offer a window for Earth observations. Tranquility was launched with the Cupola attached to mating adapter earthward facing port. After mating Tranquility with the port Common Berthing Mechanism of Unity, the Cupola was transferred to the nadir facing port of Tranquility where it will stay. The module has three redundant ports that are currently not scheduled to be used, although there is a Power Data Grapple Fixture reserved for the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, which is located on the zenith berthing location. Because the current ISS configuration requires Tranquility to be docked to the port berthing location of Unity, the three unused berthing locations of Tranquility have been disabled and would mostly be blocked by the station's other segments in any event. The docking module PMA-3 has been relocated to the port berthing location of Tranquility. The move of PMA-3 to the port location of Tranquility was required because NASA decided to leave the MPLM Leonardo permanently attached to the ISS, which will be located at the nadir side of Unity.
In 2001, NASA considered changing the design of the module. This idea for an extended or "stretched" module, was a result of the deferral/deletion of the Habitation module. The stretched module would have held 16 racks compared with the baseline capacity of eight racks. This modification was not funded and the plans were abandoned.
Read more about this topic: Tranquility (ISS Module)
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