ISS Status Report #01-28 – 13 Sep 2001
On board the International
Space Station, the Expedition Three crew, Commander Frank Culbertson,
Pilot Vladimir Dezhurov and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin continue
their work aboard the orbiting laboratory.
The Expedition
Three crew is in its fifth week of a four-month stay aboard the space
station. The crew is continuing to work with a variety of scientific
experiments aboard the station and perform periodic maintenance on station
systems as required. The crew and flight controllers are preparing for
Friday’s launch of a new Russian station component from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Liftoff of the Soyuz rocket carrying the Pirs
Docking Compartment, a Russian airlock and docking port, is planned
for 6:35 p.m. Central time September 14. Pirs, the Russian word for
pier, is scheduled to dock with the station at 8:08 p.m. September 16,
at an Earth-facing port on the stationís Zvezda module.
Last Friday, the
crew released about five gallons of wastewater from vents on the Destiny
Lab to allow ground controllers to study the behavior of the expelled
water crystals. The crew also took the first measurements for the PuFF
experiment that is studying the function of an astronaut’s lungs over
the course of a long-duration space flight. The crew tested their lung
capacity using equipment in the Human Research Facility Rack.
Oversight of science
investigations on the station from the ground is handled by the Payload
Operations Center at NASAís Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
AL. the Human Research Facility is managed by the Johnson Space Center.
Details on ISS science operations can be found at the centerís
web site:
http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov
The International
Space Station (ISS) is orbiting at an average altitude of 240 statute
miles (385 km). Sighting opportunities from the ground for many cities
around the world can be viewed at:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/
Early Wednesday
morning, the crew sent down video taken Tuesday of the smoke plume rising
from the World Trade Center area. The crew also sent down a view of
the New York City area filmed shortly before sunrise this morning. Yesterday,
Culbertson also extended his condolences to the victims of the New York
attack saying, “Our prayers and thoughts go out to all the people
there, and everywhere else. Here I am looking up and down the East Coast
to see if I can see anything else, and to the people in Washington.”
The next ISS status
report will be issued Wednesday, September 19, or earlier as events
warrant.
