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FAIRMONT — The International Space Station is marking its 20th anniversary of continued human presence in space, and many folks across NASA and the team at NASA’s Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility, in Fairmont, have a lot to celebrate.
The history of the ISS goes back to the days of President Ronald Reagan, who directed its construction in the 1980s. Assembly began in 1998 and Expedition 1 crew members — William M. Shepherd, Yuri P. Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev — arrived aboard the space station on Nov. 2, 2000.
Twenty years and counting of research, space walks and scientific exploration have been possible since, and IV&V has played an important role in those decades of success, according to ISS IV&V Project Manager Raju Raymond.
“The IV&V Program has been supporting ISS throughout this period ensuring that software continues to meet safety and mission needs,” he said. “The ISS IV&V team adds assurance to software release development efforts and software transition readiness assessments, which reduces risk to ISS operations.”
That work done in Fairmont and across the agency has made the success of ISS possible not only for Americans, but also for space exploration around the world. To date, 241 people from 19 countries have visited the ISS, and it’s been a point of major international collaboration.
More than 227 spacewalks have been conducted since the earliest days of the ISS, and the construction has served as a vantage point for space observation and a unique place for research about living in space and microgravity.
“NASA’s IV&V Program, right here in Fairmont, has been helping make sure the software used on the ISS is safe, reliable and secure for over 26 years as we started performing IV&V on ISS in 1994,” IV&V Program Director Greg Blaney said. “The ISS has grown, expanded, enhanced and advanced its capabilities a lot since it first came into being; thus, the reliance on software to perform critical functions has also expanded. And NASA’s IV&V Program has been there every step of the way ensuring the software functions appropriately.”
Moving forward, IV&V’s goals of keeping ISS astronauts safe and ensuring mission operations will continue to be vital for the agency and facilitating sustainable space exploration for decades to come. The ISS plays an integral role in some recent NASA projects, including NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission, which took off Nov. 16 for the ISS as the first operational flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket. This is an important milestone for NASA’s Commercial Crew mission and the future of travel to the ISS.
In addition, the work being done at the ISS and IV&V for its safety and operations can directly impact the evolution of NASA’s Artemis mission to the moon — like providing information and research for the Gateway outpost, which will orbit the Moon and provide support for a sustainable, long-term human return to the lunar surface.
“NASA’s IV&V Program has been working on such critical missions for NASA for many years, and at times we may forget how important this scientific research is for humankind and how risky a business it is; however, the people of NASA’s IV&V Program never forget that we are there to keep the men and women working on the ISS safe and ensure they come home safely,” Blaney said.
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