Howard Eisen, the ISS-RapidScat project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, said, 'Another mission had the idea of a two-piece payload first, but we beat them to the punch.' The RapidScat team designed and built both parts of the science payload in an 18-month-long sprint so as to take advantage of an available berthing space on the space station and a free ride on a resupply mission.
