The
Spacecraft Systems Development and Integration
Facility is an 86,000-square-foot building used
to integrate and test space hardware. Located
at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.,
this facility houses the 1.3-million-cubic-foot
High Bay Clean Room. The largest of its kind anywhere,
this clean room plays an important role in preparing
for Hubble servicing.
The
STS-103 astronauts from Servicing Mission 3A trained
in this room, as did the crews from the two previous
Hubble servicing missions. Using the clean room's
very precise mechanical and electrical simulators,
they practiced installing the actual Hubble hardware.
This is where the platform, used to anchor Hubble
to the shuttle during a servicing mission, resides.
It is also home to the shuttle carriers that take
new Hubble instruments, tools, and other hardware
to orbit.
This
picture shows the carriers used to hold the flight
hardware for the STS-61 mission in 1993. These
carriers are transported to Kennedy Space Center
where they are integrated into the shuttle bay.
The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 is visible
on the cart on the right side of this photo.
