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USA Trainers Prepared Discovery Crew for Return to Flight Mission

Posted on: Sunday, 10 July 2005, 15:00 CDT

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla., July 10 /PRNewswire/ -- With the arrival of the STS-114 crew at the Kennedy Space Center, virtually thousands of hours of flight preparation and training have come to fruition. The seven crew members are ready for flight thanks to the dedication and efforts of a highly skilled and experienced training team.

United Space Alliance (USA) employees played a major role in getting the astronauts ready for their mission. USA is responsible for training astronauts to operate spaceflight hardware and systems, and to execute on- orbit operations including rendezvous, docking and space walks. Most of the training takes place at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, with some work done at KSC.

Typically, the process of flight-specific training begins when a crew is assigned. In the case of the STS-114 crew, because of the two-year delay, the training has lasted longer and has changed focus as the Return to Flight mission has evolved.

Mission Commander Eileen Collins, Pilot James Kelly and Mission Specialists Soichi Noguchi and Stephen Robinson began their flight-specific training for a mission to change out crews at the International Space Station (ISS) in February 2002, a year prior to their planned launch date and a year prior to the Columbia accident. Following the accident, the flight's objectives changed significantly. Instead of rotating ISS crewmembers, the mission is now classified as a test flight to validate the hundreds of changes made in response to the accident investigation, and training objectives were altered accordingly.

"All of the training before Columbia was not wasted," said Juan Garriga, USA's STS-114 Training Team Lead. "We've been able to build on it. One of the new objectives is the Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS) survey. The crew operates the Remote Manipulator System (RMS), grabbing the OBSS from the other side of the payload bay, unberthing it and conducting the survey. We've trained them in this operation, building on previous RMS training."

A Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver, designed to expose the underside of Discovery to cameras aboard the ISS to look for potential damage, was also added to the flight plan. This required the crew to train extensively in simulations to perform the full-circle rotation.

Collins and Kelly recorded more than 240 hours of ascent simulation training, more than 125 hours of entry simulations and more than 340 hours of on-orbit training.

Noguchi and Robinson, the two astronauts who will perform spacewalks during the mission, each spent more than 350 hours underwater in the Johnson Space Center's Neutral Buoyancy Lab training for their three Extravehicular Activities.

Mission Specialists Andy Thomas, Wendy Lawrence and Charlie Camarda were assigned to the Return to Flight crew after the Columbia accident and after the mission objectives were changed.

"One of the key skills we're helping the crew develop is Space Flight Resource Management, or SFRM," Garriga said. "We evaluate their ability to coordinate together, make decisions, manage resources, accomplish tasks, make the right calls and delegate appropriately. SFRM is important to succeed as a crew."

For every Shuttle crew, United Space Alliance assigns a flight-specific training team consisting of certified instructors in all aspects of the Space Shuttle. The Training Team Lead develops a study guide for the astronauts to acquaint them with the Shuttle and its systems. The crew then advances to Single System Trainers and, after passing qualification tests, proceeds as a group to the Shuttle Mission Simulator.

The result is a crew that is thoroughly trained and ready to go.

"It's been a long road," Garriga said, "but it's been enjoyable and rewarding. The crew and we have kept a positive attitude throughout, and it shows. We like teaching what we know; the crew sees that, and they open up. We develop a special trust with one another."

United Space Alliance, established in 1995, is a leader in space operations offering extensive experience in space launch and recovery operations; mission planning and control; flight hardware processing; space flight training; on-orbit assembly, payload deployment and servicing; rendezvous/proximity operations and docking; large-scale integration and sustaining engineering. United Space Alliance serves as NASA's prime contractor for the Space Shuttle and provides operations services for the International Space Station. United Space Alliance employs more than 10,000 people in Texas, Florida, and Alabama.

United Space Alliance

CONTACT: Tracy Yates, +1-321-638-0424, for United Space Alliance

Source: PRNewswire

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