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.

FMI: www.spacehab.com