ISS On-Orbit Status 3 Aug 2002

All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted
previously.

Today is the first of two off-duty rest days for the station
residents.

Yesterday’s troubleshooting of the Elektron oxygen generator by CDR.
Valery Korzun was proven successful when the Elektron was activated
overnight.  The crew was congratulated on this and also on
yesterday’s successful completion of the MedOps MO-9 and PCBA
(portable clinical blood analyzer) examinations.

Today’s on-board activities consistend mainly of the regular weekly
3-hr. housecleaning job by all crewmembers.

FE-2 Sergei Treschev completed the routine maintenance of the SOSh
life support system in the Service Module (SM), and FE-1 Peggy
Whitson did the off-day status checkup of autonomous Lab payloads.

All crewmembers performed their daily physical exercise.

The single-burn reboost maneuver by Progress 246/8P on 8/1 yielded a
mean altitude increase of 7.5 km (4.7 s.mi.).  It was mostly a
perigee burn, and it lifted the apogee by about 14.1 km.

Solar beta angle of the ISS orbit today was 48 degrees and
decreasing.

Science Update (Expedition Five — 8th):
The crew was thanked by Lead Increment Scientist Vic Cooley for
their patience and persistence with the SUBSA experiment.  Their
efforts paid off with the first fully successful sample run overnight
on 8/1.  Experimenters are now looking forward to running
another new sample next week.  Also next week, several human
life sciences activities are planned, including Renal, PuFF, and
Interactions..

Extra-Vehicular Activity Radiation Monitors (EVARM):
 Next EVARM session is scheduled for 8/30.

GASMAP/Pulmonary Function in Flight (PuFF):   The
PuFF team is looking forward to the crew’s pre-EVA session on 8/9
(Friday), which will also serve as the August monthly.  At the
end of the session, the crew will leave the hardware deployed to save
time on setup for your post-EVA session (8/16).

Renal (Kidney) Stone Experiment:   Next data
collection session is scheduled for Peggy Whitson next week.

Interactions (NTXN):  Another big ‘thank you’ from the
Interactions team to the crewmembers for their continued
participation.

Human Research Facility/Workstation (HRF WS):
  n/a

Commercial refrigerator incubator module-commercial Stelsys
(STELSYS):  Experiment is complete and samples are stowed in
frozen state in ARCTIC-1. "Waiting for a ride home".

Microencapsulation Electrostatic
Processing (MEPS): Thanks to the crew from the MEPS team,
which canât wait for PCM (processing chamber module) return on 9A.

Advanced Astroculture (ADVASC):  The ADVASC team thanked
Peggy Whitson for her great work with ADVASC in successfully
completing the ADVASC Gas Sample and Nutrient Fluid Exchange this
week.  The environmental conditions have been adjusted in the
growth chamber to foster the soybean seed development.  The
ADVASC hardware continues to operate nominally.

Solidification Using a Baffle in Sealed Ampoules (SUBSA):
 Our Eurotherm Controller Verification Test went very well
on 7/31.  The SUBSA-02 sample run on 8/1 also went great, just
as planned. This was the first experiment run that had a baffle in
the sample, and it will be compared to the samples grown previously
without a baffle. The SUBSA video camera was positioned just where
the ground wanted it.  On the ground it is easy to see the
solid-liquid interface move as the sample is growing.
 Eximenters are looking forward to running another crystal
growth experiment next Wednesday.

Pore Formation and Mobility Investigation (PFMI):  New
payload for Increment 5 will be performed during Stage 9A.

Space Acceleration Measurement System (SAMS):  All
systems are nominal.  121f08 was activated to support this weeks
SUBSA runs.  PUFF/GASMAP supplied operating characteristics of
fans and pumps and PIMS is correlating this information with ~60 Hz
signals seen in acceleration data. Upcoming events include next SUBSA
run on 8/7 and SSRMS operations in preparation for EVAs.

Microgravity Acceleration Measurement System (MAMS):
 MAMS OSS captured attitude maneuvers to LVLH for reboost.
 OSS sensor saturates during reboost, therefore SAMS data will
be used for analysis.  Currently exploring slow migration of
quasi-steady vector direction. May have correlation with Solar Beta
angle.  Upcoming events that may appear in quasi-steady data are
attitude transition to LVLH, and EVA operations (cabin
depressurization and SSRMS ops).

Active Rack Isolation System (ARIS) Support:  Control of
ARIS was changed from the ARIS-ICE POP (payload on-orbit processor)
to the EXPRESS RIC (rack interface controller), which is the way ARIS
will be operated in the long term.  For the next month, PROs
(Payload Rack Officers) will be conducting a series of standard ARIS
tests to gain experience operating ARIS.  Thank you to Peggy for
her ARIS activities this week that made this important transition and
milestone possible.

Protein Crystal Growth-Single Locker Thermal Enclosure System
(PCG-STES):  PCG STES is very stable at 21.75 deg C (±
..04).

Materials ISS Experiment (MISSE):  In progress. Deployed
outside. Nominal and collecting data.

Educational Payload Operations (EPO):  EPO-5 thanked the
crew for completing their International Toys in Space Payload
objectives.  The addition of the Ku-band was great and the
footage looked fantastic.  It looked like the crew was having as
much fun doing the demonstrations as the ground was having watching
the Ku-band feed.  No issues or concerns.  Preliminary
indications show that all objectives were met.

EarthKAM:   Planned.  Will be performed during
Stage 9A.  

Zeolite Crystal Growth (ZCG):  Plans are being put in
place to transfer seven of the metal autoclaves into ARCTIC-2.
 ZCG would like to use ARCTIC-2 to attempt to slow down the
degradation of the science samples due to the extended stage.
 The autoclaves will be removed from ARCTIC-2 sometime after 9A
launch.

ARCTIC Refrigerator/Freezer 1 (ARCTIC-1):  The external
pump package failure on 7/27 interrupted coolant flow to Rack 4,
causing ARCTIC-1 to automatically go into air-cooled mode.  Once
nominal coolant flow was restored, experimenters cycled power and
data to locker 5 in order to re-boot ARCTIC-1.  This returned
the unit to water-cooled mode, and had the added benefit of
correcting the display glitch that Peggy Whitson observed on day 206
(gibberish characters).  The ground believes the display problem
may have been due to a single event upset (perhaps due to solar flare
activity), and is not likely to reoccur.  Throughout all of
these events, ARCTIC-1 continued to operate nominally and provide
cooling to the StelSys samples.  The warmest temperature
observed in the ARCTIC cold volume was 18.8 deg C (on the right
wall), and based on ground testing it is believed the samples stayed
a degree or two colder than that.

ARCTIC Refrigerator/Freezer 2 (ARCTIC-2):  Though coolant
flow on ARCTIC-2 continues to be constricted, the unit can easily
reach -16 deg C in its current configuration.  The ground is
reluctant to do much more troubleshooting with the water lines until
after 9A, to avoid the potential of adversely affecting the
performance of ARCTIC-1.  Experimenters watched the crew change
the set-point of ARCTIC-2 to +5 deg C, and they see it performing
nominally. Discussions continue on storing some of the ZCG autoclaves
in ARCTIC-2 at +5 deg C; it is expected to be task-listed tomorrow,
8/4.

Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGBA):  Will
be performed during Stage 9A.

Crew Earth Observations (CEO): The ground received 128 new
images downlinked from ISS this week, including some excellent
panoramic and oblique views of the target area of Patagonia as well
as some spectacular cloud structure shots.  This brings the
crew’s total to 2,758 to date.