ISS On-Orbit Status 17 Nov 2002
All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted previously or below.
Another typical weekend Sunday, i.e., a largely off-duty day for the crew, after their wakeup at 11:00am EST (sleep period: tomorrow morning, 2:30am-11:00am).
CDR Valery Korzun will perform the weekly collection of SP toilet flush and SVO water supply counter readings for calldown to the ground.
Korzun also conducts the regular inspection of the BRPK condensate water separator and checks the VR fan of the active SKV-1 air conditioner for accumulated humidity.
The crew is scheduled for their weekly PFCs (private family conferences), Treschev and Korzun via Russian VHF, Whitson on S-band.
All crewmembers are to work out on the exercise equipment, executing their daily physical workout program on TVIS (treadmill/aerobic) and RED (resistive/anaerobic).
As regularly each day, Peggy Whitson will do the routine status checkup of the autonomous Lab payloads.
Korzun’s task list for today includes new target objectives for the Russian Uragan earth observation program, using the electronic Nikon D1 (with downlink via Regul packet) and the LIV camcorder. [Targets are the Malay peninsula, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Tasmania, warm current between Africa and Madagascar, Shelf of Africa, ocean currents along the western and eastern coasts of South America (icebergs), New Guinea, New Zealand shelf, and African landscapes.]
Also on Korzun’s task list for today are ocean observations for the Diatomeya program with the Nikon-F5, looking for bioproductive areas (color-contrast blooms, TsKO) in the world’s oceans. [Observation and imaging targets are in the waters SE of New Zealand and S of Madagascar, i.e., coral islands, reefs, atolls, and blooms on the surface of waters surrounding islands and in channels.]
Recent routine tasks by the ground included the weekly uplinking of the NAV (Norton anti-virus) virus definition file update to the crew’s OpsLan (operations local area network), with automatic installation (“push”). For laptops connected to the LAN by wireless RF (radio frequency), the update can take up to 10 min. This is usually done on the weekend.
ISS-11A/STS-113 Launch: Work is continuing over the weekend in high gear on two open OV-105 issues: the RMS robot arm (which showed small areas of delamination where an access platform hit it earlier this week), and the gaseous oxygen and nitrogen lines (to ensure that the fatigue-related crack in the O2 flex hose is not some sort of generic, fleet-wide problem). Decision on whether launch will be attempted on Friday (11/22) or later is to be made tomorrow, Monday.
Today’s (optional) targets for the CEO (crew earth observation) program were Tuamotu Archipelago (crew was to shoot coral margins of atolls and islets. Nadir pass over one section of the island chain), Taiwan Smog (visibility low on the industrial west coast [<3 miles] where very thick smog can accumulate. Visibility extremely low at the north end of the island [<1 mile], smog moving into the Pacific, left of track. Crew to shoot any margins within or around the haze mass), Saigon, Viet Nam (nadir pass; ESC [electronic still camera] requested), Lake Eyre, Australia (crew was to document any water in this usually lake or in rivers draining towards the lake [left of track, in sunglint--ideal for small amounts of water which are otherwise difficult or impossible to document]. STS-112 handheld photos showed water in scattered parts of arid Australia despite the general El Nino drying), Hyderabad, India (nadir pass; ESC), Madras (Chennai), India (nadir pass; ESC), Khartoum, Sudan (nadir pass; ESC), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (nadir pass. The city lies on the high black-rock plateau on the north side of Africa’s rift valley. ESC requested), and Congo-Zimbabwe Biomass Burning (looking left and right of track for both individual fires and regional smoke palls). CEO images can be viewed at the website http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov
ISS Orbit (as of this morning, 7:06am EST [= epoch]):
- Mean altitude — 390.2 km
- Apogee — 399.6 km
- Perigee — 380.8 km
- Period — 92.36 min.
- Inclination (to Equator) — 51.64 deg
- Eccentricity — 0.0013906
- Orbits per 24-hr. day — 15.59
- Altitude loss — 200 (mean) in last 24 hours
- Revolutions since FGB/Zarya launch (Nov. ’98) — 22788
- Current Flight Attitude — LVLH (local vertical/local horizontal = “earth-fixed”: z-axis in local vertical, x-axis in velocity vector [yaw: -13 deg, pitch: -9 deg, roll: 0 deg]). LVLH until 11A docking.
For more on ISS orbit and worldwide naked-eye visibility dates/times, see
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/osf/station/viewing/issvis.html
