Flight Experiment Development Group

The group's largest and most complex payload was CUE, a set of several experiments flown as one payload involving international cooperation with the Republic of Ukraine. The payload included approximately 10 investigators from the US and 30 from the Ukraine, a suite of several hardware elements designed to grow and preserve plants in space, and an Ukrainian shuttle crew member acting as the CUE payload specialist. CUE flew on shuttle mission STS-87.

The experiment management and hardware development performed by this group has not been limited to the space shuttle platform. They have participated in several long duration experiments aboard the SPACELAB (SPACELAB-LMS), aboard the first Russian space station, MIR (BRIC-MIR) and aboard the ISS (JOSE and BPS / PESTO).

The group's ability to work with different researchers and conditions has allowed them to manage several challenging payloads/experiments. Significant among these are the experiments that have fostered international cooperation between NASA and other space agencies around the world. These experiments include Biorack (European and U.S. investigators flying in ESA hardware), BRIC-NASDA (Japanese and U.S. investigators in NASA hardware), CEBAS (German hardware and investigators), ARF (U.S. scientist flying in CSA hardware), CUE (Ukrainian and US investigators on NASA hardware) and SLS-J (Japanese scientists).

The final flight of Columbia proved to be a momentous event for the Flight Experiment Development group. Three payloads were flown: BIOTUBE in the SPACEHAB module, BRIC-14 in the middeck, and BRIC-14/CE also in the middeck. At NASA headquarters direction, BRIC-14/CE was added only 18 days prior to the January 16, 2003 launch. While BIOTUBE was lost along with virtually all other payloads on STS-107, some of the BRIC payload was recovered and the Science from the experiment was successfully obtained.

The Flight Experiments group has also actively supported educational flight experiments at various times. The PCOC and CUE payloads supported SLSTP student experiments and the JOSE experiment was the first KSC student experiment to fly aboard the ISS.

In all, the group has flown 41 payloads from 1985 to the present.