Status Report

ISS On-Orbit Status 9 March 2003

By SpaceRef Editor

March 9, 2003

Filed under ISS On-orbit status, NASA HQ, US

All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted previously or below. To enjoy their well-deserved Sunday rest, the crew had a very light schedule, with just a few regular maintenance tasks and some optional task list items waiting in the U.S. and Russian “job jars”.

FE-2/SO Don Pettit awoke to words of thanks and appreciatetion from POC (Payload Operations Center) on his diligent MSG (Microgravity Science Glovebox) troubleshooting yesterday. More of the latter is scheduled for tomorrow and beyond.

FE-1 Nikolai Budarin performed the daily checkup of the newly activated BIO-5 Rasteniya-2/Lada-2 (“Plants-2”) experiment that researches plant growth and development under spaceflight conditions.

Afterwards, he tended the SVO water supply system, taking readings of the supply and SP toilet flush counters for calldown to the ground. Nikolai also performed the periodic check-out of the GShT Elektron oxygen generator’s gas/liquid system (VM) for air bubbles.

Budarin’s routine work included the daily servicing of the SOSh life support system, incl. ASU toilet subsystem, and Pettit prepared the IMS inventory database for automated file import/export.

Working off the Russian task list, Budarin unstowed and installed the Molniya-SM equipment at Service Module (SM) window #3 to conduct another round of the LSO experiment, loading the program from a hard disk into the EGE 1 laptop and starting long-term recording. The experiment will be dismantled on 3/12 (Wednesday), hopefully after catching some sprites. [Objective of LSO is to study rare optical phenomena occurring in the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere, so-called “sprites” (i.e., puzzling glow phenomena observed above thunderstorm clouds). LSO was originally part of Claudie Haigneré’s French “Andromeda” payload package of taxi mission 3S that could not be performed as planned during Increment 4 due to an ISS flight attitude conflict. LSO research objectives are very similar to those of the Russian Molniya-SM, being about storm phenomena and other related events in the Earth’s equatorial regions. LSO is controlled from the French EGE-1 laptop, which needs to be loaded with orbital sighting predictions using an up-to-date NORAD tracking TLE (two-line element).]

For the task-listed Russian Diatomeya ocean observations experiment, Nikolai today focused cameras on selected seawater algae bloom (TsKO) features and cloud structures of bioproductive regions (BPR) areas in the waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. [Targets in the Atlantic included large TsKO linear blooms, the northern frontal zone of the Gulf Stream, coastal upwelling along North-West Africa, the Bengal upwelling along South Africa, the Falkland BRP and the Titanic oceanological zone. In the Pacific, interest was on the southern edge of the North Pacific Current, and in the Indian Ocean on the Agulhas current aquatorium, the West Wind Current’s southern border at Prince Edward Island, and the Mozambique current of the north of the Comoros Islands.]

Also working from the optional Russian task list, Budarin completed two-day observations for the recurring Uragan (“hurricane”) earth observations program. The images were then copied from the CompactFlash card to laptop for potential downlink via Regul Packet as well as to replaceable HDD (hard disk drive) for potential return at some future date. [Yesterday’s Uragan targets for Nikolai’s Nikon D1 were cities of Italy’s west coast, a traveling shot of the Nile River, the East coast of the Bab-el-Mandeb Straits, and the Azores and Canary Islands. Today’s targets were any sections of the Turkish coast (Nick’s choice), cities of Israel (e.g., Tel-Aviv), the city of Medina, and African Fault volcanoes.]

To reduce IMV (intra-module ventilation) noise, troubleshooting of Lab and Node air ducts, etc. was added yesterday to the U.S. “job jar” task list for today, with appropriate procedures uplinked before.

Among today’s ground-controlled data dump activities without crew involvement was the regular software downlink of the NaN (not-a-number) counter within the GNC (guidance, navigation and control) MDM. This checks whether a NaN condition has been output by the GPS (global positioning system) receiver in the previous week. [GPS is normally used by the GNC MDM as attitude and state data source, unless conditions require use of Russian data (as currently for attitude and rate). On 9/24/02, a problem with GPS firmware, involving NaN values, caused both GNC MDMs to fail. This was subsequently fixed with new s/w patches. The regular check-up continues with the new R3 s/w.]

MCC-Moscow was scheduled to perform a Soyuz TMA-1 accelerometer test today, starting at about 2:30pm EST.

Today’s targets for the CEO (crew earth observations) program were Nairobi, Kenya(Kenya’s capital city was just right of track. The crew was also to try for more oblique views of the ice fields of Mount Kilimanjaro, further right of track), Cape Town, South Africa (this pass offered a nadir view of this important South African city with its fine harbor and rugged, picturesque surroundings), El Paso, Texas (this far-western Texas city, situated on the Rio Grande River, should have been visible just left of track. Sun glint views of the Rio Grande itself may also have been possible), La Paz, Bolivia (clouds may have been an issue, but otherwise the crew had a nadir pass in high sun for this target), Patagonian Glaciers (this was the first good view of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field in some weeks now. Weather looked excellent, and the crew was asked to document details of the glaciers in late summer, especially those of the northern flank of the ice field), and Maro (the crew had a nadir fair-weather pass over this isolated island in the outer Hawaiian archipelago. They were asked to use the long lenses for details of the coral reef structures).
CEO images can be viewed at the website
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov

ISS Orbit (as of this morning, 7:16am EST [= epoch]):