Results of the ACCESS experiment

All basic EVA space construction tasks included in the experiment were accomplished on-orbit successfully, and the construction task time shows good correlation with neutral buoyancy data. However, the flight assembly times were slightly longer than the best times obtained in the water tank. This result was attributed by the EVA astronauts to the new, tighter tolerance truss hardware used on-orbit as opposed to the well-worn training hardware used in the neutral buoyancy and was, thus, not a space related phenomenon. The baseline experiment demonstrated that erectable structure can be assembled effectively by astronauts in EVA. The success of ACCESS confirmed the feasibility of EVA space assembly of erectable trusses and played a role in the decision to baseline the Space Station as a 5 meter erectable structure.