The multinational crew of the first re-supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) — a mission facilitated by SpaceHab’s privately funded modules for the Space Shuttle — was named Aug. 5 by NASA’s Office of Space Flight.
SpaceHab, Inc. the leading commercial services company supporting manned and unmanned space missions, will provide NASA with a Logistics Double Module for the May 1999 flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery to the ISS. The commercially developed module will enable NASA to ferry as much as 11,000 pounds of food and water supplies, crew equipment and other re-supply items to the orbiting outpost during the mission, STS-96.
STS-96 is scheduled to follow the launch of the Russian-built Zarya control module on a Russian rocket in November, launch of the American-built Unity module and two docking adapters in December, and delivery of the Russian-built Service Module in April 1999.
The STS-96 crew will spend seven days docked to the uninhabited station, transferring supplies that will be needed by the first resident crew in July 1999. The STS-96 crew will be led by Commander Kent V. Rominger (Cmdr., USN) and Pilot Rick D. Husband (Lt. Col., USAF). Mission Specialists include: Ellen Ochoa, Ph.D.; Tamara E. Jernigan, Ph.D.; Daniel T. Barry, M.D., Ph.D.; Canadian Space Agency astronaut Julie Payette; and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko (Col., Russian Air Force).
SpaceHab President David A. Rossi welcomed NASA’s selection of the first 13 astronauts to support Shuttle missions through 1999. “SpaceHab is excited to be helping NASA on the first supply flight to the ISS and we stand ready and able to satisfy the agency’s ISS servicing needs now and in the future,” Rossi said.
SpaceHab, with its Astrotech and Johnson Engineering Corp. subsidiaries, is the world’s leading provider of commercial payload processing services for manned and unmanned payloads. SpaceHab is the first company to commercially develop, own and operate habitable modules that provide laboratory facilities and logistics re-supply aboard NASA’s Space Shuttles. The Company also supports NASA astronaut training at Johnson Space Center, Houston.
