ISS On-Orbit Status 28 Apr 2002
All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted
previously or below. It may have been a Sunday, but from the
bustling activity on board the station one certainly couldn’t
tell.
The visiting crew (VC) has settled in quickly, and Space Flight
Participant (SFP) Mark Shuttleworth continues to have a great flight.
After a telephone call from South African President Thabo Mbeki
yesterday ("I have truly never seen anything as beautiful as
the Earth from space"), Shuttleworth had more PAO downlinks
today, via MCC-Moscow: a TV interview with South African reporter Tim
Modis at 2:50am EDT, and a TV appearance on South African SABC
News at 4:25 am, both jointly with VC CDR Yuri Gidzenko.
VC FE-1 Roberto Vittori spent time with experiments and the
processing of special Italian commemorative items brought up in
Soyuz-208. [The items, which he arranged in a suitable area of the
SM for photo and video recording, include Italian Republic and
Italian Air Force emblems, the crest of the city of Perugia, patches
and flags of Italy and the Italian space agency ASI, soil samples
from all over the world, a book by Saint-Exupery and a lock of infant
hair.]
Before breakfast, VC CDR Yuri Gidzenko, assisted by CDR Yuri
Onufrienko, performed the first session of the Russian MBI-7
"Biotest" experiment, which uses onboard equipment
(PLAZMA-3, HematocS]E2C Reflotron-4) to assess the biochemical status
in weightlessness for the purpose of adapting the metabolism to
long-duration spflight such as Mars missions.
Also before breakfast, Shuttleworth and Gidzenko started on the South
African CCE experiment (study of microgravity effects on autonomous
cardiovascular activity and skeletal muscles). Today, the task
consisted of collecting saliva samples (three for each crewmember).
[Later tests will include exercise with bungee cords and the
cycle ergometer, to determine heart rate and respiratory rate at
specific physical effort levels. A third CCE task is the logging of
food and fluid intake and measuring of leg circumference.]
VC FE-1 Vittori had his first session of the Italian VEST
assessment, the evaluation of new clothing design on astronaut
comfort level. He unstowed clothing from the VEST bag brought up by
Progress-257, and was photographed (Nikon F5) and video recorded
(Sony camcorder) by Gidzenko while donning and wearing various pieces
while moving around and performing work.
Later, Vittori completed the first session of the Italian CHIRO
experiment, which studies impairment of the muscle contraction
mechanism and the performance of astronaut upper extremities due to
microgravity effects during space flight. Vittori used a
dynamometer for gauging muscle performance while being video recorded
by Gidzenko.
Meanwhile, CDR Onufrienko set up and prepared the equipment for the
Russian MedOps MBI-2 experiment Diuresis. The assessment, which uses
Reflotron-4 accessories, the Plasma-03 centrifuge and other gear for
a sophisticated analysis of collected urine and blood samples, will
commence tomorrow.
The South African experiment Plankton Lens got additional time for
Earth imagery today when a planned nutrient exchange of the ESCD
payload was cancelled. [Similar to the Russian Diatomeya
program, Plankton Lens uses visual observations, photography and
video recording to study the bioproductivity of the oceans in the
continental shelf and continental slope regions of Africa.
Images were taken from SM windows 5-9 of various ocean regions,
and additionally of such targets as The Hague and Rotterdam in
Netherlands, DŸsseldorf and Dortmund in Germany, the Erzgebirge and
Tatra Mountains, Dniepr River, Caucasus mountain passes, the Kuban
River from its mouth to the Krasnodar reservoir, etc.]
Vittori and Gidzenko performed a 90-min. session with the Italian
ALTEINO-Halley experiment. With Vittori wearing EEG
(electroencephalograph) electrodes and reporting on a voice recorder,
the objective is to record correlations of phosphenes (observed light
flashes) and heavy charged particles detected in the AST spectrometer
inside the DC-1 "Pirs" module.
Gidzenko and Onufrienko primary task today, besides handling TV
coverage of VC activities, was the payload set up and first
operational run of the German-developed Plasma Crystal-3 experiment,
which attempts to grow protein crystals from a gaseous plasma inside
a vacuum chamber. New procedures and a cable kit had been
delivered by Soyuz 4S. [After installing the hardware, which was
stowed at various sites in the FGB, in the SM, they performed leak
checks on the work chamber, then initiated its evacuation with a
turbo pump. After this initial checkout, the pump was shut down
in the afternoon.]
VC FE-1 Vittori and SFP Shuttleworth had special time
allocated on their schedules to handle their email, and private
family conferences (PFCs) via S-band were arranged for Shuttleworth,
FE-1 Carl Walz, and CDR Yuri Onufrienko.
FE-2 Dan Bursch did the daily routine tasks of SOSH life support
systems maintenance and Lab payload status checks, while Gidzenko
prepared the daily IMS delta file. Onufrienko took SP toilet
flush and SVO water supply counter readings for calldown.
Besides the autonomous experiments running in the U.S. Lab, there are
also continuously operating automated experiments in the Russian
segment (RS), specifically Prognoz (operational prediction of ISS
crew radiation dose levels), Bradoz (bioradiation dosimetry),
Privyazka (high-accuracy determination of science instruments
orientation), Iskagenie (ISS magnetic interference
determination and analysis), and Meteoroid (particles registration on
the ISS external surface).
CEO (crew earth observation) targets today were Dhaka,
Bangladesh (the explosively growing city of Dhaka was right of
track, just left of the confluence of the largest stream courses of
the Ganges and the Brahmaputra), Ganges River Delta
(Mt. Everest and the eastern Himalayas were right of track;
weather may have cooperated and provided a view of the roof of the
world. Of interest: looking left and photographing the east-oriented
Brahmaputra valley and the Khasi Hills along the south side. Right of
track was the low braidplain of the Brahmaputra and Ganges,
culminating in the wide delta. Documentation of land use and changes
in the delta wetlands, including the dark vegetated Sunderbans, are
needed), Bombay, India (weather continues to be clear
over this rapidly growing urban center. This was a good opportunity
for a near-nadir [immediately left] view of the city), W.
Mediterranean Dust and Smog (from the Balearic Islands, crew
was to look northeastward toward the Gulf of Lyon and southern France
for European aerosols extending seaward. They intercepted the Italian
coast near Florence and should have had a good view of the Po River
delta, as well as smog moving down the valley. Venice was just left
of track), E. Sierra Nevada Watershed Lakes (once
across the San Joaquin valley and Greater Metropolitan Bakersfield,
the ISS passed directly over Mono Lake. Crew was to record the water
level in this lake, which is an important habitat for indigenous and
migrating birds. Continuing eastward, Lake Mead and then Lake Powell
was right of track. Crew was to document water levels in these great
impoundments in the desert), Dust Blow over Cape Verde Is.
(as ISS approached the Cape Verde Islands and the coast of
Senegal/Guinea Bissau/Guinea, crew was asked to watch for Saharan
dust streaming westward over the Atlantic. Context photos including
the islands and/or coastline will be helpful. Slightly
overexposed views will define the edge of the more diffuse part of
the dust mass), Eastern United States (ISS track
traversed the Great Lakes, beginning on the north shore of Lake
Superior, following the Lake Huron and Georgian Bay shore, and
exiting at the east end of Lake Ontario. Crew was to look right, past
the Finger Lakes toward Buffalo and Cleveland, and record air quality
in the urban-industrial corridor).
ISS Orbit (as of this morning, 7:23 am EDT):
Mean altitude — 392.6 km
Apogee — 397.6 km
Perigee — 387.7 km
Period — 92.4 min.
Inclination (to Equator) — 51.64 deg
Eccentricity — 0.000731
Orbits per 24-hr. day — 15.58
Altitude decrease 225 m (mean) in last 24 hours
Solar Beta Angle: -35 deg (magnitude decreasing)
Revolutions since FGB/Zarya launch (Nov. ’98) — 19627
Current Flight Attitude — LVLH (local vertical/local horizontal =
“earth-fixed”: z-axis in local vertical, x-axis in velocity vector
[yaw: -10 deg, pitch: -9 deg., roll: 0 deg]).
For more on ISS orbit and naked-eye visibility dates/times,
see
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/osf/station/viewing/issvis.html
