Sun, May 01, 2005
Atlantis Module Passes Astronaut Review
SPACEHAB says its
hardware, commercially developed and now destined for the
International Space Station (ISS), has successfully passed the
final STS-121 astronaut review.
As SPACEHAB is providing its Integrated Cargo Carrier (ICC)
system on the STS-121 mission scheduled for mid-July, the Company
was also requested to design and fabricate a custom mounting plate,
or Flight Support Equipment (FSE), which would enable two pieces of
critical hardware to be attached to SPACEHAB's ICC for transfer to
the ISS for their future use.
Several crew members of the STS-121 mission will be conducting
Extra Vehicular Activities (EVAs), or 'space walks', to transfer
the hardware from Atlantis' payload bay to the ISS. These
astronauts visited SPACEHAB Headquarters today for a training
session on the flight hardware components. Mission Specialist Piers
Sellers and Mission Specialist Michael Fossom inspected the flight
unit and then simulated the maneuvers they will perform to remove
the critical hardware from the FSE while on orbit.
A more comprehensive training exercise was successfully
completed in February when the same crewmembers performed these and
other STS-121 EVA maneuvers while submerged in the Neutral Buoyancy
Laboratory, NASA's large training pool that replicates the
weightlessness of space. SPACEHAB also designed and fabricated the
FSE training units that were used for these underwater EVA
simulations.
And on this, NASA's eighteenth mission to the ISS and SPACEHAB's
seventh, the Company has yet another hardware payload manifested
for flight -- the deployable SHOSS Box. Carrying spare parts, this
spacious stowage box will also be transferred to the ISS during the
11-day mission. On April 21, crewmembers visited the SPACEHAB
Payload Processing Facility in Florida for their first look at the
SHOSS Box mounted atop the ICC. The astronauts are scheduled to
return one last time in mid-May to perform their final walk-down of
all of the hardware integrated onto the ICC.
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