ISS On-Orbit Status 9 Oct 2002
All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted previously. STS-112/Atlantis docked smoothly at the ISS/PMA2 port, and the station now hosts nine occupants.
On this busy day for both ISS and Shuttle crews, Valery Korzun, Peggy Whitson and Sergei Treschev woke up at 4:30am, half an hour after the Shuttle crew.
CDR Korzun conducting another badge reading for the EVARM (EVA radiation monitoring) experiment, which meets the EVA minus 1-day requirement. [Following the badge reading, four pouches containing all 12 EVARM badges were relocated to the EMU servicing kit. Tomorrow Valery is to place the EV-1 and EV-2 badges inside the appropriate pockets of the spacesuits for both Piers Sellers and Dave Wolf.]
The crew completed the transfer of water from the leaky CWC (contingency water container) to a Russian EDV container today.
In preparation of the 9A docking, Peggy Whitson installed the ARIS (active rack isolation system) alignment guides in EXPRESS Rack 2 (ER2) and powered down the ER2 laptop. [The snubber adjustments made by Peggy and the ground a few weeks ago are needed to protect the ARIS actuators and pushrods from hyperextension damage. But these adjustments also make it difficult to install the alignment guides. Using only three alignment guides are acceptable to lock the ARIS rack down for the 9A docking.]
The docking by Shuttle CDR Jeff Ashby took place at 11:17am EDT, six minutes ahead of schedule. The final Go for docking was given by MCC-H to the Atlantis crew at 10:46am, when the Orbiter was about 300 ft directly in front of the station. Two minutes before linkup, the station was put in free drift, with CMGs temporarily disabled, to prevent control authority conflict between ISS and Shuttle. Attitude control was returned to ISS CMG momentum management shortly after 12:00pm.
After the docking, Korzun collected air samples with the Russian AK-1M sampler in the SM, FGB, and Lab about three hours prior to the ISS/STS hatch opening, and again, with the IPD samplers, in the Shuttle after hatches were opened, but before the air ducts were installed.
After hatch opening at 12:51pm, a handshake ceremony (complete with a Navy-style ringing of the ship’s bell [two quick pairs of bell rings, “ding-ding (pause), ding-ding (pause)”, and the announcement “Atlantis arriving” as the visiting CDR comes through the hatch for the first time], and a safety briefing for the entire crew by CDR Korzun, preparations began for tomorrow’s S1 truss transfer/installation and EVA-1 by Sellers and Wolf. [In particular, Whitson was to connect the DCP (display and control panel) cable for both the Lab and Cupola RWS (robotics workstation) and perform the hand controller calibration on both Cupola and Lab RWS before the SSRMS maneuver to S1 pre-grapple. For the EVA preparations and EMU reconfiguration by Korzun, the Shuttle crew brought paper copies of the Shuttle EVA Checklist and the new ISS EVA Systems Checklist, with procedures to be used by Korzun.]
FE-2 Treschev terminated regeneration mode for absorption bed #2 of the BMP micropurification system in the Service Module (SM), switching it back to Purify mode. Both channels are now again in Purify.
The crew completed the RED (resistive exercise device) canister swap. The new canisters, including the one repaired by the crew over the weekend, are now installed on the exercise machine. A limited calibration procedure, suggested by Whitson, has been uplinked to the crew to be performed concurrently with their exercise activities today. [When Peggy did her RED workout this morning, she was to calibrate the aft can only, on load settings 1, 3, 5, and 7, with three pulls per setting, and record the load values with the calibration tool. The results will help the ground to decide what to do next.]
Sleep period begins for all nine crewmembers tonight at 7:45pm EDT.
