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Experiments
on board the ISS
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Telespazio plays a leading role, both in
Italy and in Europe, in the field of experiments
on board the ISS. In the European Space
Agency’s ISS Exploitation programme, the
company is the User Support and Operations
Centre (USOC) for fluid physics experiments.
As such, Telespazio is the Facility Responsible
Centre (FRC) for the European fluid physics
laboratory in Europe’s Columbus module on
board the ISS.
Only four other centres in Europe have achieved
Facility Responsible Centre status: CADMOS
(CNES) in Toulouse, MUSC (DLR) in Cologne
and the ERASMUS Centre at ESTEC in the Netherlands. |
In this role, Telespazio is responsible, on behalf of the ESA, for managing the experiments on the Fluid Science Laboratory (FSL) from start to finish. This involves the preliminary support phases, defining the experiments, preparing the operational products, the training for the astronauts and the ground segment, executing the operations, and archiving and distributing the data.
To date, Telespazio has prepared and executed
the entire commissioning phase of the FSL,
as well as the commissioning, check-out
and use of significant experiments such
as Geoflow and MVIS, an experiment designed
by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Moreover,
Telespazio is involved in conducting experiments
to measure and assess the effect of ionising
radiation on board the ISS on astronauts
(Altcriss and ALTEA experiments).
Operational capacity is not limited to the
European segment of the ISS alone but also
extends to those of its international partners.
This is demonstrated by Telespazio’s current
involvement and responsibility in these
segments: through its control room at the
Naples centre, it can operate payloads and
conduct experiments on the US segment of
the ISS, as it does for the Selectable Optical
Diagnostics Instrument (SODI) and the Italian
payload, Mice Drawer System (MDS), created
by the Italian Space Agency
In addition to its activities on behalf
of the ESA, Telespazio also acts as full
support centre for the preparation and execution
of scientific operations on payloads operating
on a wide range of microgravitational platforms,
especially on board the ISS.
EXPERIMENTS ON BOARD THE ISS
Program
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