The European Space Agency ESA in June 1974 named a consortium headed by ERNO-VFW Fokker (Zentralgesellschaft VFW-Fokker GmbH) to build pressurized modules for Spacelab.
During the years 1979 through 1985, she also served as project scientist for the Space Lab 2 mission which was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1985.
The village is home to a major site of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, DLR) and became hence known to a wide audience when, in 1983 the first West-German astronaut, the physicist Ulf Merbold flew to space on board a Space Shuttle in the context of the Spacelab missions.
In addition to the laboratory module, the complete set also included five external pallets for experiments in vacuum, built by British Aerospace (BAe) and a pressurized igloo containing the subsystems needed for the pallet-only flight configuration operation.
Spacelab |
The ISPRs will be outfitted with a thin center post to accommodate sub-rack-sized payloads, such as the 483 mm (19-inch rack) Spacelab Standard Interface Rack (SIR) Drawer or the Space Shuttle Middeck Locker.
He was selected as one of four payload specialists for Spacelab 2 on August 9, 1978, and after seven years of training he flew on STS-51-F/ Spacelab-2 in 1985.
Following candidature by the Italian Space Agency, Urbani was selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in May 1995 as an alternate Payload Specialist for the Life and Microgravity Spacelab (LMS) mission, STS-78, and began training for the flight duties of a Payload Specialist Astronaut at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The United States Microgravity Payload (USMP-4) is a Spacelab project managed by Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama.
The mission was devoted entirely to Spacelab 1, a joint NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) program designed to demonstrate the ability to conduct advanced scientific research in space.
Mae C. Jemison (M.D. '81), former astronaut, Science Mission Specialist on STS-47, Spacelab-J of space shuttle Endeavour (September 1992)