BOEING AND THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

BY J.R. WILSON

NASA selected Boeing as prime contractor for the International Space Station on Aug. 17, 1993; the original cost-plus-award-fee contract began on Jan. 13, 1995. However, the aerospace giant’s involvement with the manned space station effort actually began in 1988, with Work Package 4 on the U.S. Space Station Freedom, which later was merged with the Russian Mir 2 program to become the ISS.

Boeing and its heritage companies – McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell, and the original Boeing – all played major roles in the design, construction, and integration of all major U.S. components.

“Node 1, the main building block attaching the U.S. lab and the pressurized module, which Boeing also designed and built; the U.S. lab, the main element the trusses attach to and a longer module than the Node, outfitted for all the science on the U.S. side; the trusses, from outboard solar array to outboard solar array. I like to say we have more than a million drawings in the building of space station with Boeing or heritage company names on them,” current Boeing ISS Program Manager Mark Mulqueen noted.

A close-up view of Node 1 in its work stand in the Space Station Processing Facility shows two of its six hatches that would serve as docking ports. The module was the first element of the International Space Station to be manufactured in the United States and the first scheduled to be launched on the Space Shuttle.

NASA PHOTO

“We helped in common hardware throughout ISS, which we built and helped them integrate – ducts, racks, etc. We helped the international partners and NASA verify their drawings and that post-test correlations were done correctly and were worthy of certification. Through NASA, we assisted in the successful development of their modules; those agencies and companies are very credible and know what they’re doing. Anything we could re-use from our modules we built and sent overseas to be integrated before their units went to Florida for launch.”

Mulqueen has been part of the effort since 1988 and Freedom, holding a number of ISS management jobs through the last 30 years. Prior to his current role, he was deputy program manager for the Commercial Crew Program that is building Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to launch crews from the United States to the ISS and other low-Earth orbit (LEO) destinations. His previous positions include ISS deputy program manager; ISS Vehicle Program director; ISS Mechanical, Structural Extra-Vehicle Activity and Robotics director; Mechanical Design associate director; and ISS Power Module deputy director.

Backdropped by a blue and white Earth, Space Shuttle Endeavour approaches the International SpaceStation during STS-123 rendezvous and docking operations. Docking occurred at 10:49 p.m. (CDT) on March 12, 2008. The Canadian-built Dextre robotic system and the logistics module for the Japanese Kibo laboratory are visible in Endeavour’s cargo bay.

NASA PHOTO

Backdropped by a blue and white Earth, Space Shuttle Endeavour approaches the International SpaceStation during STS-123 rendezvous and docking operations. Docking occurred at 10:49 p.m. (CDT) on March 12, 2008. The Canadian-built Dextre robotic system and the logistics module for the Japanese Kibo laboratory are visible in Endeavour’s cargo bay.

“There were schedule and technical challenges, but we overcame those to build a very robust platform that is now exceeding expectations in its 20th year on orbit,” he said. “Boeing assisted NASA in the integration of all international elements, both the interfaces, power, air, water, hatches, everything to make sure when we got to orbit everything fit up and executed as planned. We also worked with the first Russian module and mating with the U.S. first module, which was the kickoff of the station.

“Even when they were at KSC [Kennedy Space Center] together going through final assembly, the components did not meet up. We had great confidence in our digital assembly methods, which we use on commercial airplanes. I don’t think it was any riskier than trying to orient these 20,000-pound platforms into each other. We do it with our airplanes consistently and the ISS proved it works 100 percent, as we had no issues at all. We’re going to do something similar with the Gateway, with elements made to the same standards all the international partners are building to, so again we should have no issues mating all these elements in deep space.”

Drawing on lessons learned from the ISS, the Gateway, planned for construction in the early 2020s, will be a lunar-orbit operations and research outpost serving as a communications hub, science laboratory, short-term habitation module, and holding area for rovers and other robots. It also is intended to be a staging point for human and robotic exploration of the Moon and, in the early 2030s, the launch point for NASA’s first crewed mission to Mars.

Boeing also is responsible for maintaining the ISS at peak performance levels so that the full value of the unique research laboratory is available to NASA, its international partners, other U.S. government agencies, and private companies. It is contracted to continue providing engineering support services, resources, and personnel to the station through Sept. 20, 2020, although Mulqueen said a four-year extension is being negotiated.

“Our engineering support services include sustainment of the platform, operations in orbit, and the flight operations director; providing spares for parts that are in wearout and upgrades for those we’re trying to enhance,” he explained. “That will continue into the future, to keep ISS flying through U.S. government and agencies requirements to develop spaceflight and continue human spaceflight knowledge gained from working and living in orbit before we take on the rigors of deep space, where problems are harder to recover from.”

Building and sustaining a permanent crewed space station in low-Earth orbit for two decades with no serious problems and no casualties on the ISS itself has been an unprecedented success for Boeing and all those involved. But it required developing a spirit and resourcefulness unseen since the first four centuries of the European exploration and conquest of the Western Hemisphere.

“It’s one thing to be able to take a 20-yearold airplane into a hangar and upgrade the cockpit, change out the seats, replace the galley, etc., and keep flying it. We don’t have that access to the ISS, so we rely on a lot of on-orbit sensing data to understand what is going on. We can identify activities, from crew exercising to berthing of a visiting vehicle, due to the dynamic sensing we do,” Mulqueen said.

“We do a lot of data recording and assessments dialogue with NASA about what we’re seeing. There’s a lot of science behind the basic operations and whether we have correctly predicted wear-out rather than just waiting for something to fail.”

Piece-by-piece assembly of the ISS in orbit was completed in 2011, although it was expected that additional elements might be added later.

At end of assembly, the station – at 357 feet by 240 feet by 45 feet – was bigger than a football field, comprising 159 components and weighing about 1 million pounds (including visiting vehicles). It had the volume of a fivebedroom house (32,400 cubic feet), solar arrays the size of eight basketball courts, and 52 operations computers. Provision of ISS elements was global, with major components coming from the United States, Russia, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan.

During the STS-119 mission’s first spacewalk, astronauts Richard Arnold and Steve Swanson (out of frame) connected bolts to permanently attach the S6 truss segment of the International Space Station to S5. The spacewalkers plugged in power and data connectors to the truss, prepared a radiator to cool it, opened boxes containing the new solar arrays, and deployed the Beta Gimbal Assemblies, containing masts that support the solar arrays.

NASA PHOTO

Designing, building and operating the International Space Station involved 21 separate terrestrial installations. Seven Mission Control Centers managed flight operations in the beginning – NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for the shuttle and payloads, NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, JEM (Japan), Columbia (Germany), MSS (Canada), Roscosmos (Russia), and ATM (France).

The retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011 made it impossible to launch or recover any further large components. That required a complete overhaul of the way the space station had been designed and built, which included large elements intended to be returned to Earth for repair, then taken back to the ISS by the shuttle. Without that vehicle, however, many parts of the station had to be redesigned to be both smaller and either repairable on-site or disposable in orbit, to be replaced by the new, smaller versions.

Prior to the end of shuttle missions, Boeing worked to ensure both U.S. and international partner components not only would connect properly to the ISS, but also would work properly with the station software.

An example of that was the March 11, 2008, launch, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-123), of two major partner components: Canada’s Dextre robotic device and a segment of Japan’s Kibo laboratory. Contributed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Kibo was designed to increase the station’s research capability in a variety of disciplines. Dextre, from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), works with the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm to perform delicate tasks.

“Our job is to verify that software from various organizations can talk to one another and, if they can’t, to suggest and implement corrective actions,” said John Royal, Boeing’s Space Exploration Software integration manager at the time. “In regard to Dextre, we designed and built a test platform that represented a segment of the space station and provided commands to the robot to see if it would respond correctly.

“We also conducted simulations at Boeing’s Software Integration Laboratory in Houston. During the testing, we did find that some corrective actions were necessary for driving the software on the space station. Sometimes organizations can interpret requirements differently and we are here to make sure everyone is on the same page.”

On March 11, 2009, Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-119) delivered the last major Boeingbuilt element – the Starboard 6 (S6) truss, vital to the proper functioning of the ISS – and its solar array wings and batteries, completing the U.S. “core” of the station.

The 31,000-pound, 45-foot-long S6 truss segment spent more time on the ground than any other single ISS element. It arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, (where Boeing is prime contractor for payload processing) on Dec. 17, 2002. It was assembled and mated to its solar arrays and batteries in the Space Station Processing Facility, with a Boeing team regularly maintaining, cleaning, and inspecting it for corrosion. Boeing also provided the fluid support for ammonia operations used to cool the hardware’s electrical components, placed the truss into its payload canister, and transported the element to the launch pad.

In November 2009, more than 14 tons of large spare parts for the station’s electrical, plumbing, air conditioning, communications, and robotics systems – 15 elements in all, 12 of which were built by Boeing – were transported to the ISS by Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-129) in the shuttle program’s largest spare parts mission.

“This mission is very important to ensuring the ISS has maximum operational flexibility with a complete set of critical Orbital Replacement Units before the Space Shuttle fleet retires,” Joy Bryant, vice president and program manager for Boeing’s International Space Station Program, said at the time. “The station has exceeded our expectations from a lifecycle design standpoint. These replacement components will ensure the station can remain operational for many years to come as the U.S. National Laboratory ramps up its science activities.”

An artist’s conception depicts Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft docking to the International Space Station.

NASA IMAGE

While it will not match the shuttle’s cargo capacity, Boeing is gearing up to launch America’s first manned mission to the ISS since the shuttle’s retirement – the CST-100 Starliner commercial crew spacecraft. The first mission is slated to take place in mid-2019, and will be commanded by Boeing’s Chris Ferguson, who led the final Space Shuttle mission.

Also onboard will be two NASA astronauts, retired U.S. Air Force Col. Eric Boe, making his third spaceflight, and Marine Corps Lt. Col. Nicole Mann, an F/A-18 fighter pilot on her first mission into space as the first female astronaut to fly a new spacecraft on its inaugural mission.

“We congratulate all the astronauts chosen to fly to the space station on commercially developed systems. We’re taking important steps for this nation and toward development of a thriving commercial space ecosystem,” said Leanne Caret, president and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security.

“The engineer in me always thought if I’m not flying a spaceship, I ought to be part of the team building one,” Ferguson said. “My fingerprints are all over the Starliner and I’m thrilled to get the chance to go back to space on a vehicle that I helped design from the ground up. Riding along with me are all of the members of the Boeing team who have put their hearts and souls into this spacecraft.”

Ferguson, who will be making his fourth spaceflight, has been an integral part of the Starliner program since retiring from NASA and joining Boeing in 2011. He spent more than 40 days in space for NASA during three shuttle missions.

As the ISS celebrates 20 years of continuous manned operations – and with some questions about how its future will evolve – Mulqueen predicts Boeing will continue as the International Space Station’s principal industry overseer, and then carry that experience into the future and far beyond LEO.

“Looking to the future, we continue to work at ways to be more efficient, to manage the vehicle safely, and to look at systems to expand our ability to get to deep space. ISS has a lot of life left in it still. We built it and have used it diligently so that it still functions well. Whatever NASA and the international partners want to do in the future, I think Boeing can help support that,” he predicted.

“Commercial crew, much like commercial cargo, grew out of ISS with the shuttle retirement and the need for the U.S. and international partners to get to the space station. And our plans are to continue into U.S. spaceflight. Our history is very deep in human spaceflight, and it is natural for us to continue to LEO platforms – Gateway to the Moon and on to Mars.”

With that in mind, Boeing is actively seeking further work on the ISS with NASA, as well as future opportunities in U.S. commercial and foreign manned space systems. It will be a future built on the old premise that “the past is prelude” and the experience and skills Boeing has developed through the ISS, including international recognition for its legacy in human spaceflight.

“Boeing and its heritage companies are very proud of that heritage, and the fact we’ve safely had folks in orbit for more than 18 years. The most impressive part has been associating with NASA to keep humans alive and doing real science out there, developing a robust platform that gives us confidence to go back to the Moon and the Gateway project,” Mulqueen concluded.

“Some people take it for granted, given how well ISS has performed, but it involved a lot of sleepless nights. Exploration is part of our nation’s DNA, and I’m looking forward to future Boeing and NASA leaders returning us to the Moon and then on to Mars.”