While the tragic loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia brought a temporary halt to its production, there is still considerable work underway to maintain safe operations aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and to support NASA’s return to flight efforts.

This is the fifth successful year of on orbit operation for the ISS. On Nov. 20, 1998, the first element, Zarya, was launched aboard a Russian Proton rocket. Since then 13 more elements have been added to the ISS which, when complete, will have a mass of one million pounds and include six laboratories. As the station’s prime contractor, Boeing designed and built the U.S. elements and coordinated the involvement of 16 international partners.

“It has been a great partnership with NASA, Boeing and 16 nations,” said Bill Dowdell, NASA’s director of technical operations for ISS and payload processing. “The relationship has gone extra well and our launch record and success on orbit reflect that. Boeing has done excellent work getting the hardware ready.”

While that phase of the project is now complete, work continues on integrating remaining elements and maintenance support.

“The Space Station is an amazing machine,” said John Elbon, Boeing ISS vice president and program manager. “The size of the station, along with the amount of research conducted, has grown substantially over the past few years and will continue to do so once the shuttle is flying again. Our forward focus is to complete assembly and maximize operational efficiency so it can function as the world-class research lab it was intended to be.”

Throughout this process, Elbon recognizes the program challenges. As the program moves into the next 10 or more years on orbit, one of the biggest challenges will be knowledge retention -- a significant concern to NASA.

“It’s important to retain a core of experienced people, but it’s not realistic to think we’ll retain all of the people we currently have,” Elbon said. “Our senior leadership is working on a skill retention plan that will be finalized in the next couple of months. My vision includes creating a model that retains a core of experienced employees. Around this core group we will add people and allow them to grow and develop, then give them opportunities to go off and work on other programs. It’s good for our people, good for our customer and it’s good for Boeing if we create an environment where talented people are attracted to learn systems integration skills on an exciting program like ISS.”

“Skill retention is something that is on the minds of both employees and the NASA customer,” said Mike Mott, vice president and general manager, NASA Systems. “We are taking critical steps to ensure that knowledge retention is achieved while employees are given the opportunity to grow in their career. This creates a winning solution for the employee, the company and the customer.”

In the meantime, further construction of the ISS is on hold until the space shuttle returns to flight later this year. A visit to NASA’s Space Station Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida reveals 168,000 pounds of hardware – ISS trusses, the European Space Agency’s Node 2 and NASDA’s Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) – each awaiting their ride to the station. Once on orbit the components will triple the number of science facilities aboard the orbiting laboratory, increase the total power available for research by more than 80 percent and triple the surface area of the station's solar arrays.

Ground integration testing has been completed to ensure the elements will function properly together before being loaded into the shuttle for delivery. Elements like the solar arrays, that are bundled together longer than planned, are being checked to ensure that there are no problems when they are deployed on orbit.

There is also considerable work supporting the regular supply missions to the station.

“At the moment, even though we’re not flying, our depots and warehouses here in Florida are providing the consumable crew supplies that are currently being delivered to ISS on Russian Progress vehicles,” said Jim Chilton, program manager for the Checkout and Payload Processing Services Contract (CAPPS). “We’re also performing the critical function of providing the parts and supplies necessary to keep ISS operational.”

On Nov. 2 the program celebrated its third anniversary for human presence aboard station. The two newest crew members, Commander and NASA ISS Science Officer Mike Foale and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri, began a six-month stay aboard the complex Oct. 20. They are the eighth crew to reside on the station where they will spend 300 hours conducting research involving Earth observation, bioastronautics and physical sciences.