Payload/Cargo Integration

As a payload integrator, Teledyne Brown Engineering has been a vital participant in space missions for four decades.  We have extensive experience in configuration layout and assembly design, flight support equipment hardware design, mass properties, command and data management, environmental control, electrical power, structural and mechanical analysis, the materials verification process, and safety analysis.

During the 1980s and 1990s, TBE coordinated 24 scientific missions of the Space Shuttle and 8 missions of the Shuttle/Russian Mir space station program.  On Spacelab alone, TBE supported over 140 payloads and developed and delivered 14 payloads.

TBE began providing payload integration and hardware development support to NASA for the International Space Station (ISS) in 1995. Since then, we’ve supported NASA on every increment to date.  Our efforts included support to over 150 individual payloads as well as development and delivery of 50 hardware elements. At present, the ISS has 23 NASA facilities in operation and 129 payloads operating onboard or in work for an upcoming flight.

Our personnel have been directly involved in the planning, designing, analyzing, and managing of payload/cargo preparations for transport to the ISS and support to the on-board astronauts and cosmonauts.  Our Cargo Mission team supported the integration of both pressurized and unpressurized cargo items for the ISS, such as scientific payloads, ISS racks, logistics and assembly items, crew-related provisions, vehicle logistics hardware, research and development hardware, and critical orbital replacement units. This support was not limited to the space shuttle; rather, it included support to our international partners’ vehicles, such as the Russian Soyuz and Progress, Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle, and European Automated Transfer Vehicle. We also provided support to all of these vehicles for on-orbit operations.