Staffed round the clock, this is Nasa’s Payload Operations Integration Center – the control hub for all the science experiments on the International Space Station (ISS). Here, every working minute of the orbiting astronauts’ days are accounted for, monitored and – if necessary – adjusted. Houston may get all the glory but this little-known control room, part of the Marshall Space Flight Center, is the hub of space station science.

“We are the go-betweens,” says payload communications manager Sam Shine. “We are the interface between the scientists and the crew on board the space station.”

‘Very tricky’



In fact Shine is one of the few people on Earth – along with the Capcom (Capsule Communicator) in Houston – able to talk directly to the crew on the ISS, looking after them as they work through their daily science routines.

“It’s very tricky,” says Shine. “We have language barriers, we have time zone differences – sometimes trying to work with an Italian principal investigator and get the information they need up to, perhaps, a German crew member can be a bit tricky.”

Since its completion in 2011, the $100bn (£64.5bn) ISS has been all about the science. The walls, ceiling and floor of its US, Russian, European and Japanese laboratories are crammed with experiments, and astronauts spend an increasing amount of time as orbiting research technicians.