NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 1 June 2003
All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted previously or below. Day 37 in space for Expedition 7. Ahead: Week 5.
As most every Sunday, CDR Yuri Malenchenko collected the weekly data readings of the Service Module (SM)’s toilet flush and water supply status counters for calldown to MCC-M, then completed the periodic inspection of the Elektron oxygen generator’s VM gas/liquid system for possible obstructing air bubbles.
Malenchenko conducted the daily routine maintenance of the SM’s SOZh life support system (including ASU toilet facilities), while Ed Lu prepared the daily IMS inventory “delta” file.
The CDR also conducted his regular care of the on-board nursery, i.e., the daily monitoring/servicing of the BIO-5 Rasteniya-2 zero-G plant growth experiment in the Lada-2 greenhouse.
Both crewmembers completed their daily 2.5-h program of physical exercise, on TVIS treadmill, RED expander and, for Yuri, on the Russian VELO cycle ergometer with load trainer.
The crew received thanks for an excellent video survey of the TVIS harness, downlinked yesterday. [As a result, ground specialists advised them to inspect the harness closely before each use andlet them know if an accelerated failure rate at the weak points can be noticed. An earlier design had broken once and “released the crewmember into a panel”. Recommendations for patching up the harness will be uplinked early this week. Also, Houston is working to send up two new TVIS harnesses in Progress 11P, which may have some volume available for them.]
The crew had their the weekly PFCs (private family conferences), via S-band/audio.
Starting tomorrow, the Node forward port IMV (intravehicular ventilation) fan will be activated for 15 mins. for eight consecutive days in order to prevent the separation of bearing grease integral to the ventilator motor. Since the IMV valve outlet to the fan is closed, the fan may be quite noisy during this time.
The necessary one-hour troubleshooting of the EMU battery discharge procedure, now scheduled for 6/3 (Tuesday), will require last-minute deferral of the lesser-priority MSG/InSPACE (Microgravity Science Glovebox/Investigating the Structure of Paramagnetic Aggregates from Colloidal Emulsions) session on that day, in order to de-conflict the crew’s schedule. [Additional necessary tasks to be accommodated on 6/3 are water sample collection activities (2h20m), emergency book pen & ink changes, and IWIS (internal wireless instrumentation system) data dump operations.]
Flight attitude continues in solar-oriented XPOP (x-axis perpendicular to orbit plane), with yaw/pitch/roll angles = 0.5/-6.8/0 degrees. Attitude will be changed to LVLH on 6/7 (Saturday) for Progress 11P docking.
Weekly Science Update: Not available this weekend.
Today’s optional CEO targets, limited in the current XPOP attitude by flight rule constraints on the use of the Lab nadir/science window, also excluding any night target viewing, were Industrialized SE Africa (conditions continued fair for further buildup of visible haze masses. Looking right of track towards the Witwatersrand metropolis), Angolan Biomass Burning (as winter high pressure sets in, this was an ideal pass for documenting the offshore flow of aerosols into the tropical Atlantic. Looking right of track towards the central Namibian coast, which is one of two recently identified “exits” for aerosols from the subcontinent [the other is over southeast South Africa]. Oblique views of this “exhaust” phenomenon are of great interest to atmospheric scientists), Patagonian Glaciers (looking near nadir for views of the cloudfree north end of the ice sheets. Detailed views requested), Western Mediterranean Aerosol (conditions continued to be favorable for increasing smog buildup in the western Med. Looking left with Sardinia/Corsica as visual cues for our interpretation, crew was asked to shoot haze over the sea near the Rhone valley mouth [southern France] and in the Adriatic Sea, which funnels industrial haze from northern Italy southwards. Smog from both regions flows hundreds of miles from source, even as far as Iraq on one known occasion), Sahara Dust, West Africa (Dynamic event. Southwesterly outblow into the Atlantic Ocean over Senegal. Looking left for obliques, especially of the dust front), Lower Amazon River Basin (crew was asked to look left for detailed, near-obliques of the estuary coastlines), Western Europe (Dynamic event. Large high pressure system in W Europe, with clear weather from SW France, along the north slopes of the Alps, to sunset in Belarus), and High Central Andean Glaciers (looking right for general views of the tropical glaciers of Peru).
CEO images can be viewed at the websites
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov
