FIRST INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION MODULE MOVES TO LAUNCH PAD



October 26, 1998



Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington, DC
(Phone: 202/358-1726)



James Hartsfield
Johnson Space Center, Houston
(Phone: 281/483-5111)



George Diller
Kennedy Space Center, FL
(Phone: 407/867-2468)

<h4>Release: H98-196</h4> <h3>First International Space Station Module 
Moves to Launch Pad</h3> 

The International Space Station today moved to the doorstep of space 
as the first U.S.-built station component, the Unity connecting 
module, was moved to the launch pad to be loaded onto the Space 
Shuttle Endeavour.



Endeavour, scheduled for launch on Dec. 3 with an international 
six-person crew, will carry Unity to a rendezvous and attachment with 
the Zarya control module. Zarya is scheduled for launch on a Russian 
Proton rocket Nov. 20 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakstan. 
Today's move completes work on Unity in the Kennedy Space Center's 
Space Station Processing Facility, a special hangar where the module 
has been undergoing final assembly, checkout and launch preparations 
since June 1997.



"There has been a tremendous amount of excellent work done by everyone 
involved with Unity from day one to get to this point," said Steve 
Francois, director of space station and shuttle payloads at Kennedy. 
"Unity represents the first new human spacecraft to go to a Kennedy 
launch pad since the first Space Shuttle launch 17 years ago. We're 
excited and ready to see Unity in orbit. We've got a processing 
facility full of other station components, and the centerpiece of the 
station, the U.S. Laboratory module, will arrive next month. The era 
of the International Space Station is here."



More than a half-dozen major station components are in the processing 
facility, and by the end of the year more than 500,000 pounds of U.S. 
and international station equipment will have been completed. 
Upcoming milestones for Unity at the launch pad include an interface 
verification test, a check of electrical and data connections between 
Unity and Endeavour on Nov. 9, and the installation of Unity into 
Endeavour's payload bay on Nov. 13.



Unity, the cornerstone for the International Space Station, is a 
six-sided connecting module to which all future U.S. station modules 
will attach. Unity will serve as a habitable passageway to various 
parts of the station. Attached to Unity's forward and aft berthing 
ports for launch are two conical mating adapters, one to serve as a 
permanent connection to the Russian station segment and another that 
will serve as a Shuttle docking port.



Built by The Boeing Company for NASA, the 25,000-pound Unity began 
construction in 1994 at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, 
AL. Because it is a station hub, more than six miles of electrical 
wiring, 216 lines that will carry fluids and gases and 50,000 
mechanical items have been installed in Unity.



The International Space Station draws upon the resources and expertise 
of 16 nations and is the largest and most complex international 
scientific project ever undertaken to explore space for the benefit 
of all humankind.

	
-end-