Status Report

NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 1 Sep 2003

By SpaceRef Editor

September 1, 2003

Filed under ISS, ISS On-orbit status, NASA HQ, US

NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 1 Sep 2003 — iss

All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted previously or below. Week 18 is underway for Expedition 7. With the Progress docking, the ISS center of gravity has moved aft by 1.1 meters. Also, the station has gained 2% in volume and 3.7% in mass (plus, to the crew’s delight, 100% in fresh fruit).

After the long work hours following the Progress 12P docking, the crew today enjoyed an off-duty day.

CDR Yuri Malenchenko transferred the BTKh-12 “Bioecology” experiment and set it up in the
Service Module (SM) work area for operation. He performed a visual inspection of the hardware and took photographs of the installation for documentation. [The battery-driven BTKh-12 studies the effects of cosmic rays, instantaneous radiation and flows of heavier charged particles on microbiological objects used in the Russian national economy, attempting to get high-performance strains of microorganisms to manufacture petroleum biodegradants, means of plant protection, and exopolysaccharide used in the oil industry.]

FE/SO Ed Lu attended to the daily routine maintenance of the SM’s SOZh environment control & life support system and performed the regular routine status checkup of the autonomous Lab payloads (PCG-STES010, SAMS, MAMS).

Conducting another session of the Russian Uragan earth imaging program from the task list, the CDR focused the Kodak DCS760 digital camera with 800-mm lens on new targets of nature and industry environment conditions. [They included the Lake of Geneva, Alpine mountain tops, cities of Italy and Greece, including Athens, panorama scenes of islands in the Aegean Sea, the Sinai peninsula, and the cities of Medina and Mecca.]

Yuri also conducted more observations for the Diatomeya ocean research program of sea bloom features and cloud cover anomalies. [He used the Nikon F5 with f/80 mm lens to take images of the Russian Academy of Sciences/Institute of Oceanology training area in the Black Sea (Novorossisk vicinity), in the Atlantic Ocean over the large Farhadi underwater mountain as well as long color bands on the southern boundary, and a large Atlantic fishery area in the Orange river runoff.]

From 7:10-7:36am EDT, MCC-H conducted an S-Band LDR (low data rate) test to verify command and telemetry capabilities. [When LDR was active, only essential TLM (telemetry) stream packets were available and S-band S/G (space-to-ground) voice was disabled. The transition to LDR data rate and the return back to HDR (high data rate) transmission were accomplished via time tag preload scripts.]

Instructions were uplinked for the crew to charge the battery of the Motorola-9505 satellite telephone which came up with 12P for use by the returning ISS-7 crew on Soyuz 6S next month. [The actual recharge will be scheduled at a later date, and the sat phone will then be placed in the Soyuz Descent Module.]

Both crewmembers performed physical exercise, on TVIS treadmill and RED pulley exerciser.

Progress 11P will undock next Thursday, 9/4, at 3:38pm EDT.

ISS Orbit (as of this morning,7:57am EDT [= epoch]):