NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 11 December 2005

SpaceRef note: This NASA Headquarters internal status report, as presented here, contains additional, original material produced by SpaceRef.com (copyright © 2005) to enhance access to related status reports and NASA activities.

All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except those noted previously or below.   Sunday — off-duty day for Bill McArthur and Valery Tokarev, except for housekeeping and voluntary work.  Ahead: Week 10 for Expedition 12.

FE Tokarev performed the daily routine maintenance of the Service Module (SM)’s environment control & life support system (SOZh), including its toilet system (ASU), the weekly inspection of the air/liquid condensate separator apparatus (BRPK), and the weekly collection of the toilet flush (SP) counter and water supply (SVO) readings for calldown to TsUP/Moscow.

Both crewmembers completed their regular 2.5-hr. physical exercise program on the TVIS treadmill, RED resistive exerciser and VELO bike with bungee cord load trainer.   [Valery’s daily protocol prescribes a strict four-day microcycle exercise with 1.5 hr on the treadmill in unmotorized mode and one hour on VELO plus load trainer (today: Day 2 of the first set).]

Working off his discretionary task list, the FE also performed digital photography and video imagery for another session of the Russian “Diatomeya” ocean observations program.   [Valery used the Nikon F-5 digital still camera with 85mm-lens and the DSR PD-150P Sony videocam from SM windows #7 and #8 to obtain oceanological data about the Atlantic and Indian Ocean areas characterized by intensive bioproduction process development.  Target zones were South African Republic coastline, Mozambique Channel outlet, Crozet Islands, and Heard Island in the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Tropics, and the California Area, Galapagos Islands and Chile coastline in the Pacific Ocean, focusing on color contrast conditions, turbulence areas, off-shore areas near islands, cloud cover non-uniformity, coral atolls & reefs, and river effluent areas in the ocean.]

Also from his “time available” task list, the FE performed the long-term recurring task of imaging the externally mounted PKZ-1V Kromka 1-3 contamination experiment tablet.   [The Kromka tablet, deployed on handrail 2614 of the DC-1 “Pirs” docking compartment, collects thruster plume effluents.  The pictures, two-three close-ups and one-two general views, are taken with the Kodak 760 DSC from the EVA hatch 1 (VL1) “illyuminator” (window) in the DC-1.]

At ~10:35am EST, the CDR had a PFC (private family conference) via S-band/audio and Ku-band/MS-NetMeeting video.

  No CEO (Crew Earth Observations) targets uplinked for today.

To date, over 177,000 of CEO images have been taken in the first five years of the ISS.

  CEO photography can be viewed and studied at the websites:

• http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov
• http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov
• http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/AstronautPhotography/

See also the website “Space Station Challenge” at:

• http://voyager.cet.edu/iss/

To view the latest photos taken by the expedition 12 crew visit:

• http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-12/ndxpage1.html at NASA’s Human Spaceflight website.

Expedition 12 Flight Crew Plans can be found at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/timelines/

Previous NASA ISS On-orbit Status Reports can be found here. Previous NASA Space Station Status Reports can be found here. Previous NASA Space Shuttle Processing Status Reports can be found here. A collection of all of these reports and other materials relating to Return to Flight for the Space Shuttle fleet can be found here.

ISS Orbit  (as of this morning, 7:35am EST [= epoch]):

• Mean altitude — 350.4 km
• Apogee height — 357.2 km
• Perigee height — 343.7 km
• Period — 91.55 min.
• Inclination (to Equator) — 51.64 deg
• Eccentricity — 0.0010003
• Solar Beta Angle — -11.0 deg (magnitude decreasing)
• Orbits per 24-hr. day — 15.73
• Mean altitude loss in last 24 hours — 109 m
• Revolutions since FGB/Zarya launch (Nov. 98) — 40359

Upcoming Events (all dates Eastern):

• 12/20/05?? — Progress M-54/19P undocking & reentry (baseline date under review)
• 12/21/05 — Progress M-55/20P launch
• 12/23/05 — Progress M-55/20P docking
• 01/09/06 — 100 days for Expedition 12
• 02/02/06 — Russian EVA-15
• 03/22/06 — Soyuz TMA-8/12S launch
• 03/24/06 — Soyuz TMA-8/12S docking
• 04/01/06 — Soyuz TMA-7/11S undocking & return.

ISS Altitude History

Apogee height — Mean Altitude — Perigee height

For more on ISS orbit and worldwide ISS naked-eye visibility dates/times, see http://www.hq.nasa.gov/osf/station/viewing/issvis.html. In addition, information on International Space Station sighting opportunities can be found at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/ on NASA’s Human Spaceflight website. The current location of the International Space Station can be found at http://science.nasa.gov/temp/StationLoc.html at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Additional satellite tracking resources can be found at http://www.spaceref.com/iss/tracking.html.