"The Expedition Two crew has blazed the trail for Expedition Three by taking the first set of payloads and operating them on the Station," said Echols.During Expedition Two, 18 experiments were operated, and more than 15,000 commands were sent to experiment payloads and support equipment on the Station. On March 9, a Canadian principal investigator made the first call to the Station crew about his experiment. On May 1, experimenters working at a Colorado "telescience" center were the first to send commands remotely to a Station experiment.

Investigators on the ground and the team in the operations center, staffed by members of Marshall's Flight Projects Directorate, act almost like a "fourth Station crew member" by operating experiments remotely and receiving data from the experiments in space.

Engineers from Marshall's Flight Projects Directorate also managed the development of the Italian-built Leonardo multi-purpose logistics module. On its second trip to the Station, this "space moving van" will be ferried to the Station inside Discovery's payload bay. Riding inside Leonardo are two new experiment racks, called EXpedite the PRocessing of Research Experiments on Space Station or EXPRESS racks, built and tested by The Boeing Company at Marshall's Space Station Manufacturing Building. These racks transport and support experiments, providing power, fluids, gases, cooling and data-storage and transmissions computers.

The addition of EXPRESS Racks 4 and 5 will bring the total research racks inside the Destiny laboratory module to five. EXPRESS Racks 1 and 2 and the Human Research Facility were delivered, activated and checked out during Expedition Two. (EXPRESS Rack 3 will be delivered on a future expedition.) These ra
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Contact: Steve Roy
steve.roy@msfc.nasa.gov
256-544-0034
NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center News Center
8-Aug-2001