Michael Braukus
Headquarters, Washington, DC               January 16, 1998
(Phone:  202/358-1979)

James Hartsfield
Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX
(Phone:  281/483-5111)

RELEASE:  98-7

FIRST STATION ELEMENT TO BE SHIPPED TO RUSSIAN LAUNCH SITE

     The International Space Station will complete a major 
milestone toward its first launch as the first station piece, a 
U.S.-funded and Russian-built control module, is shipped from a 
Moscow factory next week to its Russian Space Agency launch 
site in Baikonur, Kazahkstan.

     In advance of the shipment of the control module, formerly 
called the Functional Cargo Block and designated by the Russian 
acronym FGB, a rollout ceremony and press conference will be 
held at the Khrunichev State Research and Production Center in 
Moscow at 11 a.m. Moscow time on Saturday, Jan. 17.  Highlights 
of the rollout ceremony will be broadcast, tape-delayed, on 
NASA Television at 3 p.m. EST Saturday, with a repeat airing at 
6 p.m. EST.  The actual shipping of the control module is 
scheduled to begin on Thursday, Jan. 22.

     The 20-ton module is targeted for a late June launch to 
begin the five-year, 45-flight orbital assembly of the new 
space station.  It will be launched on a Russian Proton rocket 
from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan.  The control module 
was built by the Khrunichev factory, under contract to The 
Boeing Company, the prime contractor to NASA for the 
International Space Station.  It will depart Khrunichev via a 
special rail car late next week to begin the 1,200-mile, five-
day train journey to Baikonur, where it will begin five months 
of launch preparations and final testing.

     "When the control module arrives at Baikonur, all of the 
elements for our first two launches will be undergoing final 
launch processing," International Space Station program manager 
Randy Brinkley said.  "The year of the International Space 
Station is 1998.  This is something that all of us have looked 
forward to for a very long time.  We have a lot of exciting and 
challenging activities ahead as we begin our assembly in orbit. 
The incredible efforts of a worldwide engineering and 
development team will be coming to fruition, and a new, 
unprecedented phase of space construction will begin."

     Shortly after the control module is launched from Russia, 
Endeavour will launch on Space Shuttle mission STS-88 from the 
Kennedy Space Center, FL, with the second piece of the station, 
a connecting module called Node-1, built by Boeing at NASA's 
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL.  The node was 
shipped to Kennedy to begin a year of launch preparations and 
final testing in June 1997.  Two mating adpaters have since 
been shipped to Kennedy from California and are being attached 
to the node prior to its launch.  Endeavour's crew will dock 
the control module to the node and perform three spacewalks to 
make final connections between the two components during the 
11-day flight.  The station will then await the launch of the 
Russian-built Service Module, a component that will become the 
early living quarters, targeted for December.  The first crew 
of the new station is planned for launch on a mission in early 1999.

     The 20-ton control module will provide early power and 
propulsion for the station as well as the capability to 
remotely rendezvous and dock with the Service Module.  
Construction began on the control module at Khrunichev in 
December 1994.

     NASA Television is available in the continental United 
States and is carried on GE-2, Transponder 9C, 85 degrees West 
longitude, vertical polarization, with a frequency of 3880 Mhz, 
and audio of 6.8 Mhz.

                         - end -

NOTE TO EDITORS:  Raw video of the event will be available 
Saturday at 8:30 a.m. EST on Galaxy 6, Transponder 17.