GROUND PROCESSING OF THE EUROPEAN COLUMBUS LABORATORY AT KSC

摘要

The Columbus laboratory is the cornerstone of the European Space Agency's (ESA) contribution to the International Space Station (ISS) and is the first European laboratory dedicated to long-term research in Space. It has been a part of the orbiting ISS since February 11,2008. During its expected lifespan of 10 years, Columbus will support sophisticated research in weightlessness, accommodating thousands of experiments in life sciences, fluid physics, material sciences and a host of other disciplines.Getting to Space, however, was no easy feat. In addition to the years spent designing, testing, manufacturing and integrating the laboratory in Europe, Columbus still had to be shipped from Europe to the United States at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) from where it was planned to be launched in the Space Shuttle. This paper will describe the detailed planning and execution that took place to process ESA's Columbus laboratory at KSC. From arriving in the US, to performing an Element Leak Test, to developing a chemical composition for coolant water, to executing a multitude of fit checks for system and payload experiment hardware, to dealing with security issues while keeping a multi-cultural, multi-agency team engaged.