Part 1
Shew! It's Not Easy to Keep This Up for Three Weeks!

We've had a very busy October and early November here in Experiment Integration at the Kennedy Space Center.

In early October, we were putting the final touches on mechanical integration of experiment hardware into the Spacelab racks. Once that integration was complete, we did a few electrical cable checks in each rack, verifying that the power systems would be safe to initially apply power to each experiment facility. Then each rack was lifted by crane up to its designated rack position of the flight floor on one of our test stands. Then each rack had to be connected to the data cables, power cables, air cooling ducts, and in some cases, fluid cooling lines emanating from the flight floor.

Once that work was complete, we connected ground equipment cables from our Level IV (Experiment Integration) test system, the Payload Checkout Unit (PCU), to begin test operations. The PCU is used to simulate Spacelab for experiment test purposes because, in Level IV, the racks and the flight floor are not yet integrated inside the Spacelab module.

We went on to test each of the Neurolab experiment facilities one at a time, in what we call an Interface Verification Test (IVT). This set of testing began on October 10 and went through October 27. This series of IVTs is an effort building up to the Mission Sequence Test (MST), an integrated test involving all the experiments and the astronaut crew.

During the initial IVT phase, we had nine different test engineers running test procedures. Some of the engineers tested two or even three different experiments. I am the lead test engineer, and my job is to review and approve the IVT procedures, to help figure out the best and easiest way to test, and to lead the effort in troubleshooting and resolving problems once we detect them. I control the test activities from a small control room where I have three video monitors to keep tabs on surveillance cameras by the payload, a data terminal to look at telemetry, a headset console to talk to the test team, and a laptop computer connected to the Internet which allows me to look up archived data and access my e-mail. It's a pinnacle of engineer "geekdom" to have all this equipment surrounding you when you're trying to run a test, but you can never have too much information.

The Neurolab facilities we tested included the Autonomic Investigations hardware (includes the Lower Body Negative Pressure Device), two Refrigerator/Freezer Units, the Astronaut Lung Function Experiment, the Vestibular Function Experiment Unit, the two Research Animal Holding Facilities, the Body Rotation Device (a chair on a spinning axis), the Virtual Environment Generator, the Kinelite (a ball launching and catching to study human reactions in microgravity) experiment, centrifuge and incubator equipment, the Visuo-Motor Coordination Facility, and the General Purpose Work Station (a large, enclosed chamber where experiment observations will occur through video systems).

With this Neurolab IVT testing, we worked six days a week, twelve hours a day. Shew! It's not easy to keep that up for three weeks, but we managed to get through the testing and work out all the problems we found. Then we were ready for the Mission Sequence Test. For MST, I am the test conductor and the author of the procedure. It turned out to be a 540-page whopper. I don't write every little bit of the procedure. The nine test engineers write the pieces relating to the experiment facilities that they have tested, and I write portions directing the order and sequencing of what we do. I assemble the procedure using the test guidelines given to me by Johnson Space Center (JSC) mission management for what they'd like to see in the test.

[Take a moment to read about the Autonomic Nervous System experiment, and then read on about working and relaxing with the Neurolab crew]