Payload specialist

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A payload specialist (English: Payload Specialist ) was a party to a space flight , who was familiar with for payload and could handle. Mostly these were satellites or devices for experiments. In contrast to the mission specialist , his specialty was not space travel, but the respective payload. The term is no longer used today, following a terminology introduced by NASA .

Origin of the term

The word is the direct translation of the English term Payload Specialist from the everyday language of NASA, with the corresponding counterpart Mission Specialist , which is also used literally in German as a mission specialist . NASA also referred to space travelers as Payload Specialists who were not taken along primarily because they had specialist knowledge of a particular payload, nor were they mission specialists, such as Christa McAuliffe as part of the Teacher-in-Space program or the 77-year-old Senator at the time of the flight John Glenn . At the end of the 1990s, the name was then only used for mission participants who had no technical task on board. The term only served as a euphemism for participants who were promoted into space for political reasons.

Usage today

After the Columbia crash during the STS-107 mission in 2003, NASA decided not to take any more payload specialists in the context of their ongoing program in the sense of the later use of the word (see above). Payload Specialist is therefore only needed there with reference to missions up to STS-107. In the context of ESA , too , the term is only used for the function of members of missions up to 2003, although the flights to the International Space Station mainly serve to bring personnel to the space laboratory for experiments. In accordance with NASA's language regulation, all participants in a mission at ESA after 2003, with the exception of the pilot and commander, are always called mission specialists, regardless of their tasks.

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