Status Report

Energia Press Release on the end of the STS-97 Mission

By SpaceRef Editor
December 9, 2000
Filed under ,

Today, at 22 hours 13 minutes, Moscow time, a 7-day joint
flight of the International Space Station (ISS) and US Space Shuttle
Orbiter Endeavor has ended.

As reported earlier, Space Shuttle Endeavor docked with the ISS orbital
complex on December 2, 2000, at 22 hours 57 minutes. Until December
8, 2000, the Orbiter crew was performing the STS-97 mission plan. Opening
of the transfer hatch to the Russian Service Module Zvezda, and meeting
of the two crews of the space station took place on December 8, 2000,
at 17 hours 36 minutes. Joint work of the both crews to transfer to
ISS complex the delivered cargoes (food containers, clothing, etc.),
and to Endeavor – returned cargoes (empty food containers, power supply
system boxes, etc.), continued on December 8 and 9. After that, on December
9, 2000, the crews parted, and at 18 hours 51 minutes they closed transfer
hatches between Endeavor and ISS orbital complex.

The first permanent ISS crew (Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev, Yurii
Gidzenko, and US astronaut William Shepherd) are into their second month
of successful work in space. The mission plan for this period has been
fully completed, including installation of a heat exchanger unit of
the air conditioning system, fans and assemblies of the thermal control
system, replacement of dust collector filters, installation of devices
of the stand-alone data acquisition system on Zarya module. ISS-1 crew
continues visual observations, and conducts TV broadcasts.

Besides carrying out the space station mission plan, ISS-1 crew performed
a significant amount of work to support docking and undocking, and the
joint flight of the space station and Endeavor. This work included monitoring,
for safety purposes, of the relative positions of the vehicles during
Endeavor docking. Monitoring of the environment inside pressurized cabins
was conducted on a regular basis, to create comfortable conditions (temperature,
pressure, atmospheric composition, moisture and air mobility) for work
of the joint crew on-board ISS complex.

The ISS orbital complex stack weighing approximately 91 metric tons
currently includes manned transportation vehicle Soyuz TM-31, Russian
Service Module Zvezda, functional and cargo unit Zarya, and the newly
upgraded US module Unity, now with a truss structure carrying two solar
array panels.

According to the telemetry data and crew reports, there are no anomalies
in the operation of the ISS systems. The crew is in good health.

Logistics vehicle Progress M1-4, which undocked from ISS on December
1 of this year, is currently in free flight.

According to the data from the Lead Operational Control Team specialists
(Flight Director is V.A.Soloviev) at Moscow Mission Control Center,
ISS complex travels in an orbit with the following parameters: inclination
of 51.6*, maximum and minimum altitudes of 389.3 and 369.6 km, respectively.
The space station orbital period is 91.9 min.

At the moment of undocking of the Orbiter from ISS complex, Progress
M1-4 was at a distance of about 1.6 thousands km, traveling in an orbit
with inclination of 51.6*, maximum altitude of 387.4 and minimum altitude
371.8 km, and orbital period of 91.9 min.

SpaceRef staff editor.