ISS Science Operations Status Report 13 Mar 2002
The Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students (EarthKAM)
photography experiment was completed for Expedition Four and deactivated
last Saturday.
During Expedition Four, a total of 1,269 pictures of various geographic
sites were taken by a camera located both in the Russian Service Module
window and the U.S. Destiny lab window as part of this science education
program, managed by the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
Eighteen schools participated during Expedition Four by selecting
photography sites and sending their requests to the Space Station.
Including pictures from previous Expeditions, the EarthKAM program has
downlinkd 2,271 pictures from the Station. The EarthKAM pictures are
available at:
http://earthkam.sdsc.edu/cgi-bin/datasys/ek_images_station/
A note from the science team transmitted to the crew last week said
in part, “Our participating students and teachers are excited with the
results so far and continue to enjoy the images that are still coming down.
Our undergraduate staff at UCSD is thrilled to have the opportunity to be
part of the experience of real-time science that is taking place on the
International Space Station. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for
making our last mission of this academic year a resounding success.”
Recovery of the Active Rack Isolation System (ARIS) and an associated
checkout experiment is proceeding according to plan. A 16-hour ground
commanded test was conducted Friday (March 8). Additional testing was
conducted Tuesday (March 12) following fine-tuning by the science team on
the ground. The experimental device, designed to isolate delicate
microgravity experiments from vibrations, experienced a failure in January.
The crew recently replaced one of eight pushrods used to “float” the rack
inside its station in the Destiny lab module.
The crew downlinked pictures Friday (March 6) of the Advanced Astroculture
(ADVASC) plant growth chamber. The crew was scheduled to collect plant
tissue samples this week for later analysis.
“Initial analysis based on photos indicates that a total of 14 plants are
alive and an additional 16 plants germinated but didn’t survive, which might
be caused by the algae combined with the quality of the seeds,” said Dr.
Weijia Zhou, principal investigator for the experiment and director of the
Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. “At the present time, we are not able to determine the
percentage of seeds, which did not germinate and the percentage of seeds
which may still germinate during the rest of the mission.”
On Saturday (March 9), the crew photographed a Space Acceleration
Measurement System (SAMS) sensor head requested by the science team to
confirm proper location within the Station.
The Experiment on Physics of Colloids in Space (EXPPCS) science team
continues to analyze a computer boot up problem experienced Feb. 24.
Procedures are being finalized for a troubleshooting effort involving the
crew that is expected to take about 90 minutes. The science team hopes with
the crew’s help to repair the experiment on-orbit.
The final Hoffman Reflex for this expedition was scheduled for today
(March 13). This experiment measures spinal cord excitability with the goal
of learning whether exercise on long space missions could be made more
efficient. The crew does the experiment by applying a small electrical
shock to the back of the leg.
“The H-Reflex experiment has now been carried out on a total of 8 subjects
on Expeditions Two, Three and Four,” said Dr. Douglas Watt, principal
investigator for the experiment, with McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
“This is the final in-flight session for the experiment, with only
post-flight testing of the present crew remaining. Once data collection has
been completed, analysis will proceed quickly and final results should be
available by mid-summer. We hope to submit a paper based on the experiment
by year’s end.”
The crew is scheduled to conduct pre-spacewalk radiation readings on the EVA
Radiation Monitoring (EVARM) experiment on Thursday (March 14).
On the crew’s schedule for Friday (March 15) is ADVASC plant sampling and
activation of the ninth growth chamber in the Protein Crystal Growth Single
Thermal Enclosure System. The first six growth chambers were activated soon
after the experiment arrived on the Space Station. The seventh chamber was
activated February 8, and the eighth chamber was activated February 28. One
chamber will not be activated. The fundamental goal for growing biological
crystals is to determine their structure and the biological processes in
which they are involved. Understanding these structures may impact the
studies of medicine, agriculture, the environment and other biosciences.
Locations scheduled to be photographed this week for the Crew Earth
Observations research program were: European air pollution, Western
Mediterranean dust and smog, Tropical Cyclone Harry near Madagascar, dry
season burning in Congo Zimbabwe, ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, lakes of
the Eastern Sierra Watershed.
Other experiments onboard the Station continue to function normally, while
the crew continues routine status checks and maintenance on the lab and its
experiments. On March 19, the Payload Operations Center at the Marshall
Center will mark its one-year anniversary of round-the-clock operations in
support of science aboard the world’s only orbiting research station.
