ISS Status Report #4 – 18 Jan 2002

The Expedition Four crew of the International Space Station wrapped
up a busy week Friday, installing a new, more robust computer storage
device and preparing for the second spacewalk of its duty tour a
little more than a week after the first.

Flight Engineer Carl Walz worked with computer experts on the ground
to install and activate a new solid state mass memory unit for one of
the station’s three main command and control computers, known by its
acronym of "C&C1." It took Walz about two hours to remove the older
mass memory unit, which used a spinning disk design, and another two
hours for flight controllers on the ground to complete the
reactivation of C&C1. Computer experts on the ground are continuing to
evaluate data on the health of the computer, but expect to place it in
the backup spot to the primary computer, C&C2, on Jan. 23. C&C2 had
its mass memory unit upgraded earlier this month. The final new mass
memory unit is to be installed in C&C3 on Feb. 1. In addition, flight
controllers this week also installed new software in two guidance,
navigation and control computers on the station.

Meanwhile, Commander Yury Onufrienko and Flight Engineer Dan Bursch
continued preparations for the next spacewalk, scheduled for Jan. 25.
This week, they replenished space suit consumables used by Onufrienko
and Walz on Monday, dried out the suits and readied the hardware items
they will install on the outer skin of the station. The spacewalk is
expected to begin at 9:35 a.m. CST next Friday, and last about 5 1/2
012/rs. Onufrienko and Bursch will wear Russian Orlan spacesuits and
exit the station through the Pirs module, which serves as a docking
module and airlock. Walz will provide support inside, monitoring their
progress and moving the robotic Canadarm 2 for television coverage of
their activities. It will be the 33rd spacewalk in support of space
station assembly, and the eighth conducted from the station itself.

The two space-age construction workers will install 11 different
systems on the outside of the Zvezda Service Module, including six
thruster plume deflectors, the second of four ham radio antennae, a
replacement experiment for studying contaminating particles from
control jets, and a physics experiment. The Efflux Protection Assembly
deflectors are designed to redirect plumes from the jets that help
control the station’s orientation so that they do not leave
potentially harmful residues on the outside of the station where
spacewalkers must work. The suitcase-like Kromka 1 experiment will
replace the existing Kromka 1-0 experiment package, placing new
materials samples where they can collect contaminants from the
thrusters for future analysis (the Kromka 1-0 samples will be bagged
and returned to the station for delivery to Earth aboard a Soyuz
return craft). The Platan-M package is a physics experiment designed
to search for natural low-energy heavy nuclei of solar and galac!
tic origin.

The amateur radio antenna is one of four that eventually will allow
space station crew members to make "ham" radio contacts from the
comfort of their living quarters inside Zvezda.

While crew members concentrated on construction and maintenance tasks,
inside the Destiny Laboratory, a host of scientific experiments
continued to collect information about the effects of long-term space
flight on humans, biotechnology, medicine, agriculture, electronics
and pharmaceutical compounds.

For the latest information on the crew’s activities aboard the space
station, future launch dates and times, as well as station sighting
opportunities from anywhere on the Earth, please visit the Web at:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov. Details on station science operations can
be found on the Web site of the Payload Operations Center at NASA’s
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. at:
http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov.

The next ISS status report will be issued Jan. 25, following the
spacewalk.