New Boeing Facility Looks Toward Space

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 to make sure it is functioning properly.

The facility, unveiled during a ceremony on 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., which 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, or supports, as well as a primary sleep station, a laboratory, panels for harnessing solar energy and software.

The program is managed in Houston.

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 manned space flight missions since the beginning of the Apollo program. Rockwell was acquired in 1996 by Boeing, which took over the design and maintenance of the space shuttles.

Boeing is closing the Downey facility and transferring 2,800 employees to Huntington Beach, which has 6,450 workers already.

Boeing’s Huntington Beach quarters formerly housed McDonnell Douglas Corp. which merged with Boeing in 1997.

“We have a long future here and we’re putting money behind it,” said Dwight L. Woolhouse, associate program director for shuttle operations.

The upgraded Huntington Beach mission room features a state-of-the-art data and communications system that Boeing officials said is more reliable and faster than the old one.

Woolhouse said this marks the first time that Boeing has a mission support room of similar level and size as those at Johnson Space Center in Houston and Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He said having both shuttle and space station engineers will enable Boeing to have “two sets of eyes and two brains working on a problem from a different perspective.”

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