The inside of the Kibo laboratory module’s airlock

iss071e066956 (May 9, 2024) --- The inside of the Kibo laboratory module's airlock safely links the pressurized environment of the International Space Station to the vacuum of space. Astronauts load hardware, experiments, and CubeSats inside the airlock then depressurize it before the external hatch opens to the harsh environment of space. The Japanese robotic arm grapples the research hardware and installs it on an external pallet or points a small satellite deployer away from the station and deploys the CubeSats into Earth orbit.