Boeing to Be Taking Space Shuttle’s Pulse

When NASA launches its next space shuttle in about six weeks, there’ll be another center besides Houston monitoring the mission’s progress from the ground.

A team of engineers at Boeing Co.’s new $3-million Engineering/Mission Support Room in Huntington Beach also will be tracking key shuttle hardware.

The facility, unveiled during a ceremony Monday, also will house engineers who will monitor hardware for the new international space station now under construction, the first time engineers for both projects will be working side by side.

This room “supports all of the shuttle space flight missions,” said Russ Turner, president and chief executive of United Space Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp. that has the contract to operate the space shuttle program for NASA.

“There will be 42 of them over the next five years to deploy the new international space station. This is the room that provides the key engineering support to both the shuttle and the station hardware.”

Boeing is the top contractor for the ambitious space station program. The company’s space and rocket unit in Huntington Beach is building the station’s main trusses, a primary sleep station, a laboratory, panels for harnessing solar energy and software.

The new 6,774-square-foot facility took a year to complete and replaces a smaller facility originally established in Downey by Rockwell International Corp., which had a supporting role in NASA’s human space flight missions since the beginning of the Apollo program. Rockwell was acquired in 1996 by Boeing, which took over the design and the maintenance of the space shuttle.

Boeing is closing the Downey facility and transferring 2,800 employees to Huntington Beach, which has 6,450 workers already. The Huntington Beach quarters formerly housed McDonnell Douglas Corp., which merged with Boeing in 1997.

The upgraded Huntington Beach mission room features a state-of-the-art data and communications system.

This is the first time Boeing has a mission support room similar to those in Johnson Space Center in Houston and Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, said Dwight L. Woolhouse, associate program director for shuttle operations.

He said having both space shuttle and station engineers will provide “two sets of eyes and two brains working on a problem from a different perspective.”

The first time the new room will be in full use will be Dec. 2, when shuttle mission STS-103 is scheduled to fly replacement parts to the Hubble Space Telescope.