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CREW TRAINING FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: EXPERIENCES WITH THE BIOMASS PRODUCTION SYSTEM (BPS) PAYLOAD.  J.J. Stadler¹ and W. T. McLamb².  ¹Orbital Technologies Corporation, Madison, WI and ²The Bionetics Corporation, KSC.

   The recent flight of the Biomass Production System (BPS) to the International Space Station (ISS) can provide valuable insights to payload developers with regard to the process of training ISS crewmembers.

   There are many challenges when training a crewmember for an ISS payload.  The complexity of the BPS hardware and the crew-intensive operations on orbit demanded significant time and resources during the pre-flight crew training flow.  Changes to ISS mission manifests, the extreme length of missions, and crew proficiency issues must also be considered.   ISS crew training flow differs in many respects from Space Shuttle crew training, but integration of these two processes was necessary when flying a payload to the International Space Station.

   The ISS crew training process provided many advantages to the payload.  Interactions with crewmembers and crew representatives provided a valuable astronaut perspective to hardware designers, as well as recommendations that could be incorporated into BPS hardware design, procedures, and stowage.

   The importance of hands-on crew training should not be underestimated.   Training sessions provided the ISS crewmembers with access to the hardware to be used on orbit and the subject matter experts to supply them with a sound understanding of the hardware and science objectives.  This proved invaluable during the course of the mission in allowing the crewmember to respond as anomalies and unique opportunities arose.

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