Rocketdyne Workers Meet Astronauts

Rocketdyne employees had a chance Monday to put faces to the mission for which they are working to assemble a new solar-powered energy system to be used in the International Space Station.

Six astronauts, five of whom are to lift off next summer to begin the early phases of construction of the space station, met with hundreds of workers at Rocketdyne’s Space Power Electronics Laboratory.

“[The visit] gives them a better appreciation for the program and what’s really involved,” Brewster Shaw, Rocketdyne program manager, said as the astronauts signed autographs for the employees. “And what’s really involved are human beings.”

Astronauts Robert D. Cabana, Nancy Jane Currie, James H. Newman, Jerry L. Ross and Frederick W. “Rick” Sturckow, along with veteran astronaut John Young, thanked the workers gathered in a quad at the Canoga Park facility for their efforts.

“I enjoy coming out here,” Ross told the employees. “I get to see the hardware . . . being fabricated. You folks have a reputation in the space business of doing a job and doing it right.”

Rocketdyne officials said the facility is responsible for developing the end-to-end electrical system that will provide user and housekeeping power for the station. It involves a photovoltaic power generation subsystem that will provide energy to the crews of astronauts during times of sunlight and shade.

The facility also must provide a power system for the Russian elements of the space station and for integrating Russian power sources.

NASA’s STS-88 U.S. crew is scheduled to conduct an 11-day mission in July--the first American assembly mission for the International Space Station--to continue work on the space station that will have been started by a Russian crew the month before.

Rocketdyne officials said completion of the space station, a cooperation among the United States, Russia, Canada, parts of Europe, Japan and portions of South America, is planned for 2003.

“You’ll be able to sit out there on your porches at midnight with your grandchildren as the space station passes by, and you’ll be able to say you had a hand in it,” Ross told the assembled crowd.