ISS On-Orbit Status 22 Dec 2002
All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted previously or below. Ahead: Week 4 for Expedition 6.
Onboard the station, it was another typical Sunday (and the fourth Advent): off-duty except for a few scheduled tasks.
FE-1 Nikolai Budarin took the weekly data readings of the SVO water supply and SP toilet flush counters for calldown to MCC-Moscow via S-band.
FE-2/SO Don Pettit conducted an audit of onboard PCS (portable computer system) hard drives and their contents. [Five PCS hard drives were flown on flight 11A for transfer to ISS, and three of those drives were mistakenly returned to the ground. These HDDs are loaded with the 12A software which is required to support the C&C (command and control) software Revision #3 (R3) that is slated to be loaded prior to ULF-1. In order to determine a course of action, MCC-H uplinked a list of HDDs and CDs in order for the crew to verify that the listed items are indeed resident on board.]
Budarin again checked out the Elektron oxygen generator system for air bubbles in the gas/liquid mixture (GShS), which-after repairs-usually take a while to dissipate. Last checkup was on 12/8.
Later, Nikolai performed the daily routine maintenance of the SOSh life support system in the SM, while CDR Ken Bowersox conducted the daily status checkup of Lab payloads (PCG-STES010, ZCG).
Last night, a premature maneuver to +YVV (y-axis in velocity vector) became necessary when temperatures outside the vehicle caused the ground to go to the jointly approved “barbeque” mode early to cool off Progress batteries. Biggest impact was scrambling yesterday’s PFC (private family conference) times, which were rescheduled for today. The station continues on YVV on Russian thrusters until it returns to XPOP (no sooner than 12/25).
All three crewmembers had their PFCs, via S-band audio.
The crew also completed their full daily physical exercise program on TVIS (treadmill), CEVIS (cycle ergometer), RED (resistive exerciser) and VELO (bike) with load trainer.
Today’s targets for the CEO (crew earth observations program) were Eastern Mediterranean Dust and Smog (cold high pressure is forecast to be over the eastern Med by the time of this pass. Conditions should be favorable for a low-level inversion in the atmosphere to trap pollution there. Crew was to try for oblique view to the right of track as you approach Greece from the southwest), Casablanca, Morocco (the crew had a nadir view with improving weather over this renowned Moroccan city on the coast), Chicago, Illinois (light is low, but you should have a near-nadir pass in fair weather over “The Windy City), Seattle, Washington (light is low, but the crew had a nadir pass over this great port of entry for the Pacific NW,) and Saskatchewan Swampland (the crew’s first pass of the day for this target was to the north. They were to try for context views to the right of track for one of only three North American inland deltas requested. Of interest: looking for a long swampland [100 km, axis parallel with track] with confused drainage. Global study of inland deltas is in progress. On a second pass, the near nadir view was on the Assiniboine River. Despite the low light, the wintry and icy conditions there should have enhanced the landform patterns here).
