ISS Status Report #01-7 — 28 Feb 2001

An unmanned Russian
Progress resupply ship successfully docked to the International Space
Station (ISS) early today, bringing a ton of fuel, food and personal
effects for the crew which has been living on board the outpost since
November and the crew which is set to replace them in less than two
weeks.

With Expedition
One Commander Bill Shepherd, Pilot Yuri Gidzenko and Flight Engineer
Sergei Krikalev looking on from inside the Zvezda living quarters, the
Progress automatically linked up to Zvezdaís aft docking port at
3:50 a.m. Central time as the Station sailed over Central Asia. Unlike
the docking of the last Progress to the Station in November, which had
to be conducted manually after the automated docking system experienced
a problem, todayís linkup was textbook and uneventful. Last Saturday,
with Gidzenko at the controls, the crew undocked its Soyuz capsule from
the same docking port and flew to a redocking at the nadir docking port
of the Zarya module to make room for the Progress.

Within two hours
of docking, the crew opened hatches between Zvezda and Progress and
began to unload its supplies, which include clothing, spare parts, computers
and office gear for Shepherd, Gidzenko and Krikalev and their replacements,
Expedition Two Commander Yury Usachev, Jim Voss and Susan Helms, who
are set to be launched next Thursday aboard the Shuttle Discovery to
begin the second expeditionary mission to the Station. The Expedition
One crew will return home aboard Discovery on March 20 to complete more
than four months in orbit.

Late yesterday,
NASA managers officially set March 8 for the launch of Discovery to
the Station on the STS-102 mission to not only transport the second
Expedition crew, but to continue the outfitting of the U.S. Laboratory
Destiny through two space walks and the delivery of additional logistical
items, spare parts and hardware in an Italian-built cargo module called
Leonardo. The first racks of science equipment for research aboard the
Station will also be moved from Leonardo into Destiny, including the
Human Research Facility, which will be a mainstay for experiments involving
the study of the reaction of the human body to weightlessness.

The International
Space Station continues to orbit the Earth in excellent shape at an
altitude of 235 statute miles. Unless developments warrant, the next
update on ISS activities will be included in the first STS-102 Mission
Status Report, which will issued following Discoveryís launch on
March 8.