Space Station Furnace Facility. Experiment/Facility Requirements Document (E/FRD), volume 2, appendix 5

The function of the Space Station Furnace Facility (SSFF) is to support materials research into the crystal growth and solidification processes of electronic and photonic materials, metals and alloys, and glasses and ceramics. To support this broad base of research requirements, the SSFF will employ a variety of furnace modules operated, regulated, and supported by a core of common subsystems. Furnace modules may be reconfigured or specifically developed to provide unique solidifcation conditions for each set of experiments. The SSFF modular approach permits the addition of new or scaled-up furnace modules to support the evolution of the facility as new science requirements are identified. The SSFF Core is of modular design to permit augmentation for enhanced capabilities. The fully integrated configuration of the SSFF will consist of three racks with the capability of supporting up to two furnace modules per rack. The initial configuration of the SSFF will consist of two of the three racks and one furnace module. This Experiment/Facility Requirements Document (E/FRD) describes the integrated facility requirements for the Space Station Freedom (SSF) Integrated Configuration-1 (IC1) mission. The IC1 SSFF will consist of two racks: the Core Rack, with the centralized subsystem equipment, and the Experiment Rack-1, with Furnace Module-1 and the distributed subsystem equipment to support the furnace.