arsTechnica
By ERIC BERGER
The Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, released photos on Monday showing the much-anticipated Nauka space station module enclosed in its payload fairing. This will be Russia’s first significant addition to the International Space Station in more than a decade, and it will provide the Russians with their first module dedicated primarily to research. “Nauka” means science in Russian.
This is a sizable module, including crew quarters, an airlock for scientific experiments, and much more. With a mass of about 24 metric tons, it is about 20 percent larger than the biggest Russian segment of the station, the Zvezda service module.