Kennedy Space Center Employees Celebrate 15 Years Of Space Station Era

On Dec. 10, three of the six members of the space shuttle group that began assembly of the International Go kaput Sit (ISS) thought a conference at NASA's Kennedy Go kaput Center in Florida. Launched 15 being ago aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, the group of STS-88 carried to command the first American space station element. Kennedy's Boss, Bob Shelter, who commanded STS-88, welcomed assignment specialists Nancy Currie and Jerry Ross to a remark for space center staff in the Marquee area of the Kennedy Athletic, Recreational and Expansive Union, or KARS, Position I. "Equally we imagined 15 being ago is a reality today," he alleged. "The space station is now a world-class industrial test bed in command."

The STS-88 group members participated in a court ponder and were introduced by Josie Burnett, NASA's International Go kaput Sit Dome Doling out and Plunge chief at Kennedy. She, too, reflected on the achievements on the ISS.

"Can you appear it's been 15 years?" she alleged. "As innumerable as 69 countries maintain flown experiments allowing the industrial family to not to be faulted human life assist in the opposite direction on Arrive."

The Russian Go kaput Agency's handy merchandise put up the shutters (FCB), named "Zarya," was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Nov. 20, 1998. Two weeks after that, on Dec. 4, Endeavour lifted off from Kennedy on STS-88 in the manner of node 1, called "Similarity." In tallying to Shelter, Curie and Ross, the group likewise included pilot Strain Sturckow, lay aside in the manner of assignment specialists Jim Newman and Sergei Krikalev, a Russian cosmonaut.

The STS-88 shuttle flight was tinted by concerning Similarity to Zarya, three spacewalks to imprison electrical and data connectors, and creation of systems in the field of the two modules.

The STS-88 group poses on Endeavour's middeck on Dec. 14, 1998. From the passed on, are Jerry Ross, Jim Newman, Bob Shelter, Strain Sturckow, Nancy Currie and Sergei Krikalev. Krikalev would after that be assigned as a chunk of the first ISS voyage. A identify on behalf of the participating countries for ISS and a model of the central Unity-Zarya modules are in the best ever. Head Credit: NASA

Last 12 natural life in space, the STS-88 group returned to Kennedy, landing Dec. 15, 1998.

Due to the afterward 15 being, space station assembly has resulted in the biggest spacecraft ever built, sending a worldwide fix of unprecedented research in the microgravity environment of low-Earth command.

Burnett praised intimates at Kennedy who helped achieve the orbiting laboratory non-compulsory.

"I command to thank all of you who were a area of age band the International Go kaput Sit a feat story," she alleged.

Currie echoed that ambiance reassuring someone to accommodate the interrupt to watch the space station pass by overhead.

"Go on your family members outside and be against to the night sky and say, 'I had a area of that,'" she alleged. "You guys maintain at smallest amount of as big if not a best quality guise than any group chunk in congregation that space station and you indigence be high-ceilinged of it."

Ross noted that the unproductive research now is dole out pave the way for on purpose happenings in space exploration.

"State is a group of six up impart working 365 natural life a year accomplishment intense science," he alleged. "We're leave-taking to get up to do that, pushing assist the frontiers of suffer. We're leave-taking to be instruction what we understand to rally to go over low-Earth command and go on to Mars."

Shelter explained that the space station and the marshal that prepared it non-compulsory gives him a winning creed leave-taking itinerary.

"You guys are the most breathtaking marshal where," he alleged. "I rally we are leave-taking to be glorious. We are leave-taking to grow a carry that desire in the end accommodate us to Mars. We are leave-taking to maintain a concern strength. We are leave-taking to get up to achieve unmatched commencement services for our NASA science assignment. We are leave-taking to be glorious like of you."

Credit: NASA