Servicing and Performance Checkout Equipment for the International Space Station Joint Airlock to Support Extravehicular Activity

The International Space Station (ISS) will include a Joint Airlock consisting of an Equipment Lock and Crewlock to be used by both the United States and Russia for conducting extravehicular activities (EVAs). The U.S. EVAs will be performed using the existing Shuttle extravehicular mobility unit (EMU). The Russian EVAs will be performed using the Orlan-M spacesuit. At the NASA/Johnson Space Center, a distributed set of hardware assemblies, referred to as Servicing and Performance Checkout Equipment (SPCE), are under development to support EVAs using either the EMU or Orlan-M spacesuit.

This paper provides a description of each SPCE item along with a summary of the requirements and capabilities provided by the SPCE in support of EVA events from the ISS Joint Airlock.