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Payload Operations
The Payload Operations Center at Marshall Space Flight Center is the world's primary science command post for the International Space Station, the most ambitious space research facility in human history.The Payload Operations team is responsible for managing all science research experiments aboard the Station. The center is also home for coordination of the mission-planning work of a variety of international sources, all science payload deliveries and retrieval, and payload training and payload safety programs for the Station crew and all ground personnel.
State-of-the-art computers and communications equipment deliver round-the-clock reports from science outposts around the planet to systems controllers and science experts staffing numerous consoles beneath the glow of wall-sized video screens. Other computers stream information to and from the Space Station itself, continuously linking the orbiting research facility with the science command post on Earth.
The Payload Operations Center continues the historic role Marshall has played in the management and operation of NASA's on-orbit science research. In the 1970s, Marshall managed the science program for Skylab, the first American space station, Spacelab -- the international science laboratory carried to orbit in the late '70s by the Space Shuttle for more than a dozen missions -- was the prototype for Marshall's Space Station science operations.