Italian Space Agency (ASI) Biological Experiments Operational Development – Mission STS-120/10A
- Paper number
IAC-08.B3.4.8
- Author
Dr. Alessandro Bellomo, ALTEC S.p.A., Italy
- Coauthor
Dr. Mauro Piermaria, Italian Space Agency (ASI), Italy
- Coauthor
Dr. Salvatore Pignataro, Italian Space Agency (ASI), Italy
- Coauthor
Dr. Gabriele Mascetti, Italian Space Agency (ASI), Italy
- Coauthor
Dr. Dario Castagnolo, MARS s.r.l., Italy
- Coauthor
Dr. Vittorio Cotronei, Italian Space Agency (ASI), Italy
- Year
2008
- Abstract
The STS-120 Mission main objective was to perform the Node 2 assembly to the ISS. The Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli has been part of this Mission with the role of Mission Specialist and, in this context, ASI had the intention to exploit this significant event by performing some experiments in orbit.
The ASI experiments for the STS-120 Mission were:
? Fischer Rat Thyroid Low Serum 5? SPORE, which investigates the effects of high energy cosmic radiation and solar radiation on “Bacillus Subtilis” PY17 spores – biological experiment (educational) ? Hand Posture Analyzer – HPA which aims to investigate arm, wrist and hand behavior (hardware already on ISS – experiment protocols execution only) ? COLOR, which has the scope to demonstrate that colors can positively influence the well-being of astronauts; mental tests are foreseen as part of this experiment (due to astronaut work time constraints, the payload has been de-manifested; training model manufactured)
A Project Team, managed by ALTEC S.p.A., acting as Prime Contractor and composed by MARS Center, KAYSER Italia and Italian Universities (Principal Investigators) and Schools, supported ASI during the whole experiments life-cycle starting from the initial negotiation with NASA aimed to manifest the payloads on STS-120 until the post-landing activities addressed to the payloads safe return to the Laboratories in Italy for scientific assessment. The peculiarity of mission STS-120 in terms of duration, objectives, and associated astronauts compressed on-orbit working time planning together with the program tight schedule and inter-agencies responsibilities, imposed to ASI and to the project team to implement, at the maximum extend, collaboration engineering approaches among the involved industries and the scientific community and to optimize, at the highest level, the convergence process.
Purposes of this paper is to present the evolution of the program from the experiments conception, to the execution and post-mission analyses through its development phase, highlighting the applied program operational development procedures and providing, at the same time, an overview of the “lessons learned”.
The paper was not presented at previous meetings and financing and attendance of the author at the respective IAC at Glasgow to present the paper is assured.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-08.B3.4.8.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.