SPACEHAB Inc.

SPACEHAB, Inc. was a commercial space company established in Houston in the early 1980s by former Smithsonian Institution scientist Robert Citron, who conceived a pressurized module carried in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle to expand the working space available to astronauts. The three meter long Spacehab module, derived from the European Space Agency Spacelab design, provided about 28 cubic meters of habitable space for experiments and cargo and first flew aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour on the STS-57 mission in June 1993. In May 1999 a Spacehab module helped resupply the first elements of the International Space Station under construction, and the company later contracted with the Russian firm RSC Energia to build a pressurized commercial module named Enterprise intended for attachment to the station; the company was later renamed Astrotech Corporation.