FIVE YEARS OF NASA RESEARCH ON ISS - A CONTINUING SAGA

摘要

The first NASA experiments reached International Space Station (ISS) in September 2000, a very modest beginning to what later became a robust, diverse and overall highly successful research program, continuing essentially uninterrupted since March 2001. Along the way, several major challenges had to be overcome. First, there were delays in the initial construction of the station. Second, maintenance of the station exceeded earlier assumptions, resulting in less crew time being available for research. Third, the lengthy interruption of Shuttle flights after the Columbia accident significantly, but temporarily, reduced the research traffic to and from ISS. And fourth, the Vision of Space Exploration has caused a refocusing of NASA's research efforts on ISS from a multi-disciplinary basic and applied science program to one dedicated to solving the critical questions to enable exploration missions. The principal factors that allowed these challenges to be overcome have been flexibility and cooperation. Flexibility on the part of the ISS Program to minimize impacts to research from delays and resource bottlenecks, flexibility on the part of researchers to adapt their research to changing environments, and flexibility to be able to use existing and planned facilities not only for their original basic science purpose but also for new applications. Cooperation not only between the ISS Program and the research community, but also among NASA and its International Partners, are required to continually strive to optimize the research conducted aboard ISS. Once the challenges were overcome, the research program has been remarkably successful, with an expanding on-orbit capability. Approximately 90 investigations have been performed, resulting in many peer-reviewed publications.