NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 20 February 2005

SpaceRef note: This NASA Headquarters internal status report, as presented here, contains additional, original material produced by SpaceRef.com (copyright © 2005) to enhance access to related status reports and NASA activities.

All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except those noted previously or below.   Sunday, second weekend rest day for the crew. Ahead: Week 18 of Increment 10.

FE Sharipov completed the weekly routine SOZh/ECLSS maintenance tasks, including taking toilet flush (SP) counter and water supply (SVO) readings in the Service Module (SM) for calldown to TsUP/Moscow.

CDR/SO Chiao collected the periodic reading of the cabin air’s current CO2 partial pressure in the SM and Lab, using the U.S. CDMK (carbon dioxide monitoring kit), for calldown (along with the battery status) for use in trending analyses.

Leroy also completed the regular weekly maintenance reboot on the operational PCS (portable computer system) laptops and the bi-monthly restart of the OCA comm router laptop.

Sharipov had three new items on his voluntary Russian task list, leading off with the regular daily inspection of the BIO-5 Rasteniya-2 (“Plants-2”) experiment, which researches growth and development of plants under spaceflight conditions in the Lada-5 greenhouse.

As second task-listed item, the FE completed a new session with the “Uragan” (hurricane) earth-imaging program that had him focus the LIV video camera from SM window #9 on targets specified on an uplinked list.   [Targets for today were a survey of the main African rift (a major earthy crust fault extending through a lake and valley), volcanoes per choice, the Central American coastline and South America with the Andes.]

Salizhan’s third discretionary task was a run of the Russian Environmental Protection Service’s Ekon (KPT-3) experiment, using the Nikon D1 camera with f800 lens for photo imagery of the Atlantic Ocean’s Sargasso Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.

The crew performed their regular daily 2.5-hr. physical exercise program on TVIS, RED exerciser, CEVIS cycle and VELO cycle with bungee cord load trainer.   [Salizhan’s daily protocol currently prescribes a four-day microcycle exercise with 1.5 hr on the TVIS set on the treadmill and one hour on VELO (today: Day 3 of a new set).]

The Science Officer was thanked for yesterday’s “Saturday Science” program, during which he transferred, consolidated and configured the FOOT (Foot/Ground Reaction Forces during Space Flight) Hardware Supply Kit, including the specially instrumented LEMS (Lower Extremity Monitoring Suit) pants garment.

At ~2:31pm, Leroy is scheduled for his weekly PFC (private family conference) via S-band/audio and Ku-band/NetMeeting video.

Current flight attitude of the station continues to be earth-fixed LVLH XVV (local vertical/local horizontal, x-axis in velocity vector), to be changed to sun-pointing XPOP (x-axis perpendicular in orbit plane) on 2/22 (Tuesday).

No CEO (crew earth observations) targets today.

CEO photography can be viewed and studied at the websites:

• http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov
• http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov
• http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/AstronautPhotography/

See also the website “Space Station Challenge” at:

• http://voyager.cet.edu/iss/

To view the latest photos taken by the expedition 10 crew visit:

• http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-10/ndxpage1.html at NASA’s Human Spaceflight website.

Expedition 10 Flight Crew Plans can be found at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/timelines/

Previous NASA ISS On-orbit Status Reports can be found here. Previous NASA Space Station Status Reports can be found here. Previous NASA Space Shuttle Processing Status Reports can be found here. A collection of all of these reports and other materials relating to Return to Flight for the Space Shuttle fleet can be found here.

ISS Orbit  (as of this morning, 11:27am EST [= epoch]):

• Mean altitude — 358.5 km
• Apogee height — 361.6 km
• Perigee height — 355.5 km
• Period — 91.71 min.
• Inclination (to Equator) — 51.65 deg
• Eccentricity — 0.0004518
• Solar Beta Angle — 4.9 deg (magnitude increasing)
• Orbits per 24-hr. day — 15.70
• Mean altitude loss in last 24 hours — 165 m
• Revolutions since FGB/Zarya launch (Nov. 98) — 35736

ISS Altitude History

Apogee height — Mean Altitude — Perigee height

For more on ISS orbit and worldwide ISS naked-eye visibility dates/times, see http://www.hq.nasa.gov/osf/station/viewing/issvis.html. In addition, information on International Space Station sighting opportunities can be found at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/ on NASA’s Human Spaceflight website. The current location of the International Space Station can be found at http://science.nasa.gov/temp/StationLoc.html at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Additional satellite tracking resources can be found at http://www.spaceref.com/iss/tracking.html.