Background

The Flight Systems Implementation Branch within the Space Biosciences Division is responsible for the requirements definition, design, fabrication, certification and flight operations bioscience experiments for numerous manned and unmanned spaceflight projects. The Branch uses a multidisciplinary team approach that integrates science, engineering and operations to ensure compliance with customer requirements and mission success.

The Branch is currently supporting three payloads, the first scheduled to be launched on STS-130, TROPI-2 and the remaining two, Mouse Immunology and a collaborative experiment with Walter Reed Army Institute of Research are scheduled for launch on STS-131. In addition a continuation of our 30-year collaboration between Russian Institute of Biomedical Problems and NASA will continue with our branch managing the Biospecimen Sharing Program for the Bion-M1 mission planned for 2012 from Kazakhstan.

The Branch also supports the Human Research Program's International Space Station Medical Project (ISSMP) in the areas of flight hardware certification, logistics support for contingency shuttle landings at Dryden Flight Research Center, and implementation support for International Partner (IP) experiments.

The Branch completed the flight certification of the Next Generation Holter in July 2008. The Holter Monitor 2 launched successfully on STS-126 in November 2008 and is now on station available for crew use in conjunction with the Human Research Program's manifested experiments. As the implementation support lead for the IP experiments, Ames is working closely with the European Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency and other international partners on the agreements and coordination of their manifested ISS human research experiments.

In addition, the Branch also supports the Exploration Medical Capabilities Project through the Life Sciences Data Archiving (LSDA) project. It manages and maintains the biospecimen sharing repository for non-human biospecimens and other archival materials. These materials are available to the external scientific community upon request and with approval of NASA Headquarters.