Vessel ID Sys assembled inside the ISS

Vessel ID Sys, the Norwegian/Luxembourgian ship tracking payload is one step closer to operation onboard the International Space Station . The Vessel ID Sys antenna on the outside of the European module Columbus was installed during a spacewalk in November 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34p02od-B2k). Now, the time had finally arrived to assemble the components of the payload that are located inside the Columbus module. American astronaut T.J. Creamer was the man chosen for this task and set everything up very nicely.
In the coming weeks power will be turned on and Vessel ID Sys will be activated for an operational period of two years. During this time Norwegian and Luxembourgian scientists hope to test several technical aspects of receiving information from seafaring vessels and tracking them from several hundred kilometers above the surface of earth (http://romsenter.no/Norsk/Nyheter/Nytt_fra_nettet/?module=Articles;action=Article.publicShow;ID=51289).