ISS On-Orbit Status 20 Jul 2002

All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted previou
sly or below.  Today 33 years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin lande
d on the Moon with Apollo 11, while Michael Collins remained in the Columbia
mothership in lunar orbit.



The ISS crew today had the first of two weekend rest days, with only a few
routine tasks scheduled.



Major weekly activity on board the ISS was the three-hour housecleaning of
the station’s living quarters.



CDR Valery Korzun terminated the regeneration process for absorbent bed #2
of the BMP micropurification unit.  Both filter channels are back in Pu
rify mode.  He also did the routine inspection of the BRPK-2 water cond
ensate separator



FE-1 Peggy Whitson completed the off-duty day routine checkup of the autono
mous payloads status in the Lab.



FE-2 Sergei Treschev meanwhile performed the daily routine maintenance of t
he SOSh environment control and life support system.



All crewmembers worked out in their regular daily physical exercise program
.



The crew was advised by MCC-H to "keep an eye open and a camera ready&
quot; during high-latitude night passes this weekend.  The recent big c
oronal mass ejection on the Sun is predicted to cause spectacular auroras in
the high latitudes (current predictions continue to show no radiation dose
concern with this solar eruption).



Yesterday, FE-1 Whitson and the ground made two attempts to activate the MC
A (major constituent analyzer), without success.  Although the MCA was
powered up successfully, it then went to a failed state. A dump of the MCA c
onfiguration data was performed and analysis of this data is currently in wo
rk. Further MCA troubleshooting will be based on the analysis’ results. The
MCA is in a safe configuration.



Following a SAMS (space acceleration measurement system) software upgrade y
esterday, SAMS was powered up and the SAMS EE booted successfully.  &nb
sp;MSG (microgravity science glovebox) cycled power to the SAMS EE, which su
ccessfully verified a new software feature that enables sensor data with SAM
S EE initialization.  In addition, the SUBSA (solidification using a ba
ffle in sealed ampoules) payload team successfully uploaded their experiment
parameter file (EPF) for their next run.  SAMSII/SUBSA are fully opera
tional for SUBSA’s next run slated for 7/23.



Thanks were uplinked to Peggy Whitson from the MEPS (microencapsulation ele
ctrostatic processing system) team for her hard work and extra support to sa
mple #2.



Temporary new launch dates for Mission 9A/STS-112 and Mission 11A/STS-113 a
re NET (not earlier than) 9/26 and 11/2.