Rassvet

Most people won't know what this word even means, let alone that it is an element of the International Space Station. To be more precise, it's the element long awaited by me (and a lot of other fellow paper modelers) to finish the ISS in the configuration it had when the last shuttle flights were taking place. I chose Endeavour's last flight for my model and I started work on it at the 29th of December 2010. The last element I made was at the 28th of August the next year, when the AMS, a spectrometer, was added to the truss section. After that, it was waiting for Rassvet to be released. Earlier this year, Alfonso (re-) released the whole of the ISS as it is now in two big packages. The Russian part is free, the rest is downloadable for a very reasonable price.
So now it was time to do some work on the ISS!

Something you don't see often at PK's cutting mat: three 1/400 shuttles! Top left is Endeavour, which I took from the ISS for easier access, top right is the still unfinished Atlantis and bottom is good old Columbia.

More after the jump.

I still don't know what made these stains. The modules all were coated in a thin layer of clear varnish.

I noticed, when I had the model off of the shelf, that two older modules showed nasty rust-like spots and they also needed replacement.  So I took the front piece of the modules apart, using some gentle force. (i.e. I ripped the lot apart.)
I redid the Harmony node and I also redid Columbus, the European module.

The back part of the Harmony module was left on, It was stuck and also not damaged, so I left it on.

The redone Columbus and Harmony modules, while the docking port has a brass rod added for receiving Endeavour and stiffening its position when it all is glued. All modules received an extra layer of clear varnish.

After that, it was time to do Rassvet. It is one of the most stuffed packages on the station, having all kinds of reserve parts and parts meant for future use on Nauka, the big module the Russians still want to launch somewhere at the end of this year (or maybe next, or maybe never..). It has a little airlock, like a rolled up camping mattress and a folded radiator heat sink for Nauka on its back. It has a truss structure on its hull, partially for transport in the shuttle payload bay, partially because it carries the airlock and the radiator. Anyway, because of all this, it is a part with a lot of small details and elements. 

I scratch built some of the parts, just like I did with the other element of the station,  because they were too small to actually build from the original parts. I also didn't want to let Rassvet differ too much from the other parts, because I kind of seem to have improved a little on the detailing in the time inbetween starting this model and now.

So now there it is, Rassvet! The added Soyuz was first a stand alone part of the model, when I wanted to depict the moment of Paolo Nespoli's photo session with the ISS on departure of his crew. But whatever base I tried, it just did not look right to me. The Soyuz, scalewise, was much too close to the station. So now I decided to attach the spacecraft to its docking point.

Placed between the Unity node and Zarya, Rassvet faces down to Earth (nadir). At a later date, all the stuff on its hull will be placed on other parts of the station.

Oh yeah - Rassvet, now what does it mean? It's "dawn".