ISS Status Report # 24 August 8, 2001 – 11 a.m. CDT Expedition Two Crew
With Discovery poised on Launch Pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center for
liftoff tomorrow to the International Space Station, Expedition Two
Commander Yury Usachev and Flight Engineers Jim Voss and Susan Helms
completed the packing of personal items and hardware for their return to
Earth after more than five months in orbit and awaited the arrival of their
replacements.
The STS-105 mission to deliver the third resident crew to the ISS is
scheduled to launch tomorrow at 4:38 p.m. Central time as the ISS sails over
the Southern Ocean south of Adelaide, Australia at an altitude of around 240
statute miles.
Discovery’s Commander, Scott Horowitz, Pilot Rick Sturckow, and Mission
Specialists Pat Forrester and
Dan Barry are ready to ferry Expedition Three Commander Frank Culbertson,
Pilot Vladimir Dezhurov and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin to the Station
for a four-month mission, succeeding Usachev, Voss and Helms, who have been
aloft since March 8.
Discovery was cleared for launch earlier this week by Shuttle managers after
reviewing the status of fuel injector units used in the hydraulic power
units that steer the Shuttle’s solid rocket booster nozzles during the first
two minutes of powered flight.
Last night aboard the ISS, one of three command and control computers (C & C
1) which is used as a backup for the operation of some Station systems
experienced a problem reading its hard drive, or Mass Storage Device. The
hard drive stores commands for a variety of vehicle activities on the U.S.
segment of the complex. Flight controllers attempted to reboot the computer
with no success and are continuing efforts to bring it back into operation.
This computer has lost only some of its functional capability. The Station’s
primary computer (C & C 3) is operating normally, however, and a third
computer (C & C 2) is being transitioned from standby status to act as the
backup for C & C 3.
A newly refurbished command and control computer had already been manifested
to be launched on Discovery to the ISS as a spare, and would be installed
for operation, if required. The backup computer glitch has had no impact on
Station operations and will not affect the joint mission to deliver the new
Expedition crew to the orbital outpost.
As Usachev, Voss and Helms prepared to handover command of the Station to a
new crew, Russian engineers prepared two vehicles for launch right after the
STS-105 mission. At the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a Progress
resupply ship is being readied for launch on August 21 to deliver food, fuel
and supplies for the new Expedition Three crew. It is scheduled to dock to
the aft docking port of the Zvezda Service Module on
August 23, one day after the current Progress attached to the ISS is
jettisoned. And the newest ISS module, a Russian Docking Compartment named
Pirs, the Russian word for pier, is in the final stages of preparation for
launch on September 15 to link up to the earthward facing docking port of
Zvezda. It will provide a new docking port for future visiting Russian
vehicles.
In addition to packing to come home, the Expedition Two crew continues to
oversee a variety of science investigations. Oversight from the ground is
handled by the Payload Operations Center at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight
Center in Huntsville, AL, except for the Human Research Facility, which is
monitored and controlled from the Telescience Support Center (TSC) at the
Johnson Space Center, Houston. For details on ISS science, visit the
following website:
http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov
The International Space Station (ISS) is orbiting at an altitude averaging
240 miles (385 km). Sighting opportunities from the ground for many cities
around the world can be viewed at:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/
The next ISS status report will be issued after the STS-105 mission.
Subsequent ISS status updates will be contained within the mission status
reports for Discovery’s flight.
