A new commercial business to lease existing space assets is described. Called Pathfinder, this collaboration between The Boeing Company, RSC Energia and Honeywell provides quick, cost-effective, near-term access to external payload sites on the Mir space station beginning in mid-1996. The paper outlines this payload service, including: (1) appropriate payload types and profiles, restrictions and qualification requirements, (2) system and operations descriptions, (3) payload integration services available to take a payload from any stage of development through flight, and (4) reference schedule for mission development and deployment. Some key legal, regulatory, warranty, contingency, export, data privacy and payload decommissioning issues are addressed. Finally, Pathfinder's current program status is reported.
Pathfinder: Commercial Payload Service on the Russian Mir Space Station
Fifth International Conference on Space ; 1996 ; Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
1996-07-19
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
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