Part 2:
Neurolab Test Success and a little Nostagia

The astronaut crew arrived to participate in the test, and on October 28, we did the pre-test setups of stowage hardware to ready the experiments for testing on October 29. It was the astronauts' first experience with the assembled flight hardware, and quite a few of us engineers here were kept busy that day between doing our setups and helping answer questions for the flight crew. The astronauts also took many, many pictures of the experiment hardware to take back to JSC to study while they trained back there.

On the night of Oct. 28, quite a few of us from KSC, the astronaut crew, and our experiment providers from JSC and the Ames Research Center (ARC) all went out to eat dinner and to get to know each other a little better. We went to a local favorite in Port Canaveral, a place called Frankie's which is famous for hot wings. A grand time was had by all.

The MST consisted of five 30-minute time "slices" where we simulated different portions during the on-orbit mission when the Neurolab experiment complement places its maximum demands for power, data, and thermal cooling on the Spacelab. We take measurements to quantify this data, and we also look for incompatibilities between experiments running at the same time.

We did three time "slices" on October 29 and two on October 31 and used October 30 to do reconfiguration between the test days. The slices are actually the easy part of the test. The hardest part is getting everything activated and configured to start a time slice, and then deactivating some things while activating others and then mechanically reconfiguring for the start of the next time slice. Fortunately, the KSC Level IV test team working with me to help write the procedures and run the test did a great job, and we made the MST a rousing success.

After the MST, we had to power up three more times to work off some problem reports from testing, but on November 10, we completed the last Level IV power up for Neurolab. With no more planned Spacelabs, it was an ambivalent day with joy at the prospect of being ready to move the rack and floor train into Level III/II for integration into the module, but sadness at performing the last activity ever in Level IV. Late today, the Neurolab rack and floor train was rolled into the Spacelab module.

Over the next two weeks, it will be readied for test activities, and I'll be busy incorporating comments into the procedures now out for review that I wrote for experiment testing in Level III/II which starts December 1. So, that gives us a few weeks to catch our breath from Level IV and get ready to go at it again when we start the Level III/II testing. That's all for me till then.

Tracy