Space Station Users Contamination Requirements

The NASA Space Station is being designed to accomplish a number of different goals. The design includes the incorporation of basic truss structure and systems, pressurized manned modules for habitation and experiments, attachment accommodations for external payloads, a servicing facility, and several orbiting platforms for payloads. The contamination control implications of such a vast endeavor are tremendous. The NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) serves as the primary user interface for the Space Station. In addition, the GSFC is responsible for Space Station Attached Payload Accommodations, the Co-Orbiting and Polar Orbiting Platforms, the Customer Servicing Facility, and the Flight Telerobotics Servicer. A main priority of the Space Station is to accommodate users and to service users. The primary users of the Space Station include materials processing experiments, life sciences experiments, astrophysics payloads, Earth observation payloads, and plasma physics experiments. There will be an initial set of users identified for the Initial Operating Capability (IOC) Space Station and a host of additional users identified for future growth of Space Station. As one can imagine, each of the users aboard Space Station has its own unique set of science and performance requirements. Correspondingly, each user has its own contamination sensitivities and requirements. This paper will provide a summary of the contamination sensitivities and requirements,of a number of planned Space Station users in all science categories. The paper will also address Space Station and user plans for accommodating these needs and ensuring that contamination requirements are met.