Engineers Assess Health of IUS for Chandra Mission

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (8/11/99) -- Personnel from The Aerospace Corporation's Eastern Range Directorate at Cape Canaveral contributed to the July 23 launch of the world's most powerful X-ray telescope, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Efforts by the company's team focused on the assembly, checkout and launch of the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), which placed the telescope into orbit from the space shuttle Columbia.

Employees at the Eastern Range have performed general systems engineering and integration for the

Air Force on all IUS missions. For the Chandra mission, Aerospace personnel provided support tailored to requirements of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

The effort began in January 1997 to define requirements for IUS system tests and to begin integration of the IUS with the telescope and the shuttle.

Eastern Range personnel reviewed all procedures used to assemble, test and launch the IUS. As problems occurred during assembly and test, they recommended troubleshooting approaches and advised Marshall on the adequacy of problem resolution.

One of the challenges facing mission personnel was the reworking of IUS hardware associated with the failure of a previous mission, IUS-21.