SAGE III - ISS Prepped For ISS flight

Three flights of the SAGE III instrument are currently planned including a flight aboard a Russian Meteor-3M platform in 2001 and the International Space Station in 2004. The launch of the third SAGE III mission has now been identified.

After nine years in a clean room, an instrument that studies the Earth's atmosphere and protective ozone layer has been returned to service.

NASA's Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III-ISS (SAGE III-ISS) will measure ozone, water vapor and aerosols in the atmosphere when it is attached to the International Space Station (ISS) three years from now.

The instrument is scheduled for launch in 2014 on a SpaceX rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"It will ride in the unpressurized trunk of the rocket, and NASA will use robots to dock the instrument on the ISS - kind of like Transformers," said Michael Cisewski, SAGE III-ISS project manager at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. "We're mounting to a piece of the ISS that is going up in the next shuttle launch."

Patience Pays off
SAGE III-ISS is a nearly exact replica of SAGE III Meteor-3M, sent into orbit in 2001 on a Russian satellite. SAGE III Meteor-3M went out of service five years ago when the satellite's power supply stopped working.

The new instrument was built in anticipation of being attached to the space station in 2005. A change in ISS design, however, put those plans on hold.

The instrument was stored in a Class 100 clean room in a sealed shipping container under a continuous gaseous nitrogen purge. The purge kept clean dry "air" inside the instrument.

"Now, everything is falling into place," said Cisewski.

SAGE III-ISS underwent initial testing at Langley the week of February 14, 2011, in a clean room set up in a bay with an afternoon view of the sun.

Visit the SAGE III-ISS website for more info