NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 11 Oct 2003
All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted previously or below.
As regularly each Saturday, after wakeup (2:00am EDT), morning chores and breakfast, CDR Yuri Malenchenko and FE/SO Ed Lu completed the standard 3-hr. station cleaning.
Ed Lu performed the regular once-a-week maintenance reboot on the operational PCS laptops.
Yuri Malenchenko conducted the daily routine maintenance of the SM’s SOZh life support system (including ASU toilet facilities), while Ed prepared the IMS (inventory management system) “delta” list for automatic export/import to update the database.
As a new item on the Russian discretionary task list, Yuri was charged with removing the second subset of translational hand controller (RUD) and rotational hand controller (RUO) from the right seat container (PG) of Soyuz 6S and transferring them to the Russian segment (RS) of the station.
Also working from the Russian task list, Malenchenko transferred data collected during the recent Molniya-SM/LSO experiment sessions from two LSO hard-disk drives (HDDs) to disks on the French EGE-1 laptop. [The copying involved ~14 Gb of data collected on 9/1-9/5 and ~15 Gb stored on 10/1-10/6, each set taking approximately one hour to transfer.]
Interrupting their station cleaning at 10:30am EDT for about 45 min, the crew was scheduled to downlink messages of greeting to the International Book Fair currently taking place at Frankfurt, Germany, on October 8-13. [Russia, for the first time, is participating in the Book Fair as Guest of Honor, and the Fair’s main theme this year is Russian literacy and poetry, under the motto “Russia: New Pages”. The “telebridge” with the ISS crew today was one of 120 different events planned within the Book Fair which is considered the world’s largest of its kind. The exchange was prepared with an “Ask the Crew” contest for best questions to the ISS crew carried out by German media before the Fair. Besides the contest winners, ground participants in the exchange were media representatives, Fair visitors, and East-German Soyuz astronaut Sigmund Jähn.]
The crew had their the weekly planning conference with the ground via S-band/audio to discuss next week’s “Look-Ahead Plan” (regularly prepared jointly by MCC-H and MCC-M planners and uplinked ahead of time).
The regular Program Management conference originally scheduled for today has been moved to 10/13 (Monday).
Both crewmembers worked out with their daily 2.5-h program of physical exercise, on TVIS treadmill and RED expander.
The replacement (R&R) of the Lab remote power controller module (RPCM) with the tripped RPC-4 is now scheduled for Wednesday (10/15). [Prior to the R&R the MDMs (multiplexer/demultiplexers, computers) powered by this RPCM have to be reconfigured. Payload MDM PL-1 is being transitioned to PL-2 today and the transition of C&C-1 (command & control computer #1) is planned for 10/14. In addition, early on Wednesday RPC-4 will be re-closed in an effort to gather more data about the RPCM’s health. If the RPC opens again and the data indicate an actual overcurrent condition, the RPCM itself may not be the problem, and the R&R will probably not take place. For destowing the spare RPCM, the CEVIS (cycle ergometer with vibration isolation) will have to be removed and then re-installed, in a 50-min. activity. If the crew is unable to retrieve the spare before 10/15, time will be made on the timeline on that day.]
The SAMS II (space accelerations measurement system 2) team thanked the crew for their persistence and patience in getting the ICU (interface controller unit) laptop back online yesterday. [Data and status indicator information provided by the crew are being analyzed to determine the next troubleshooting steps.]
Upcoming Soyuz Events:
- 7S launch: 10/18 (Saturday), 1:37am Eastern, 9:37am Moscow, 11:37am Baikonur;
- 7S docking: 10/20 (Monday), 3:20am Eastern, 11:20am Moscow;
- 6S undocking: 10/27 (Monday), 6:20pm Eastern, 2:20am (10/28) Moscow;
- 6S landing: 10/27 (Monday), 9:36pm Eastern, 5:36am (10/28) Moscow.
Weekly Science Update (Expedition Seven — 23rd):
Words of appreciation were uplinked to the crew for their contributions this week with the ESTER shutdown and GASMAP health check. Their support and understanding of the CBOSS-FDI investigation gives the PD (payload developer) teams a different perspective that will allow them to make procedural improvements as well as help bridge the gap between ground-based science and science conducted in micro-G. Ed Lu’s continued manufacturing of the ISSI coupons “contributes to the future soldering investigation that should prove to be very interesting”.
GASMAP: Completed.
Human Research Facility/Workstation (HRF WS): Continuing.
Ultrasound (USND): Completed.
Hand Posture Analyzer (HPA): Next session will be on 10/15 (Wednesday).
In-Space Soldering Investigation (ISSE): Ed Lu was thanked for his patience in creating a large number of test coupons, which will be critical to subsequent in-space soldering activities.
Pore Formation and Mobility Investigation (PFMI): Completed for this Increment.
Space Acceleration Measurement System (SAMS): Ed Lu was thanked for his assistance in getting Part 1 of the SAMS battery troubleshooting completed today. SAMS will continue to monitor the battery charge status to see if any portions of the Part 2 procedure need to be performed. SAMS does appear nominal at this time.
Microgravity Acceleration Measurement System (MAMS): MAMS continues to measure the quasi-steady acceleration environment using the OSS sensor. HiRAP accelerometer downlink is off.
Protein Crystal Growth-Single Locker Thermal Enclosure System (PCG-STES): Behaving nominally.
Investigating the Structure of Paramagnetic Aggregates from Colloidal Emulsions (InSPACE): Current test matrix is complete.
Materials ISS Experiment (MISSE): In progress. Deployed outside. Nominal and collecting data.
Cellular Biotechnology Support Systems (CBOSS): One question the experiment should answer was asked by Ed Lu during this week’s discussion with the PI (Principal Investigator): why is the mixing of the cells different on-orbit than on the ground? Data from Expedition 4 has shown that the cells tended to bulk up around the port of the TCM (tissue culture module), never mixing with the fluid in the TCM’s main body, even though the crew member “drew circles” on the TCM to mix the cells. Samples taken by the crewmember on subsequent days showed declining concentration of cells in the sample over time, indicating that they did not mix well but had stayed in or near the port. Ground procedures, performed just as in micro-G, did not exhibit the same effect. The experiment’s goal is to find the best way to inject and mix the cells throughout the entire TCM, so that the concentration of cells is consistent throughout.
Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle School Students (EarthKAM): Activities are completed for Increment 7.
Earth Science Toward Exploration Research (ESTER): The ESTER operations provided a great learning experience for the ground team. Preliminary findings indicate that the targeted sites were outside the camera field-of-view (FOV) when the image was taken. Analysis is underway to determine the flaw in the targeting process. The error could be introduced anywhere from the vector input, software track propagation, computer times, both on the ground and on orbit and the OpsLan time that the SSC computers sync to, etc. (Example: The schedule called for an image over an area just NE of Long Beach, CA (Norwalk), but the result was Nellis AFB, NE of Las Vegas). The images are well focused, though.
Coarsening in Solid-Liquid Mixtures-2 (CSLM-2): Activities have been concluded for this Expedition.
Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGBA): CGBA is maintaining a nominal temperature of 20°C. GCF (Granada Crystallization Facility) will remain in CGBA until returning on 6S.
Educational Payload Operations (EPO): The EPO Center of Mass demonstrations were excellent. The crew was thanked for providing the ground with great information on this topic. NASA Education is looking forward to using the video in educator workshops and at web sites.
Crew Earth Observation (CEO): A striking image of the Toquepala open pit copper mine in southern Peru will be published on Earth Observatory this weekend. The ground team is working through a backlog of new imagery that ISS continued to acquire during the ESTER Get-Ahead. A number of ISS City-at-Night images, especially of Chicago, are indeed the best seen from the station to date and are candidates for publication. The target site of Guadalajara, Mexico can be marked complete. Thanks for the crew’s continued efforts to photograph CEO targets during the ESTER Ops without the uplinked daily lists and despite the limitations on lens and window access this test imposed.
Today’s CEO (crew earth observation) targets, limited in the current XPOP attitude by flight rule constraints on the use of the Lab nadir/science window, and including the targets of the Lewis & Clark 200-year memorial locations, were Congo-Zimbabwe Biomass Burning (good pass along the axis of the burning Zambian plateau. Lakes Tanganyika and Malawi left and right of track, the latter in sunglint), Nairobi, Kenya (left of track ~2 degrees. Ice-capped Mt Kilimanjaro also left, but closer to track), Lake Poopo (nadir pass over this highly sensitive global change site, indicative of El Nino-wavelength climate periodicities), Kabul, Afghanistan (nadir pass), Hanging Gardens of Babylon (nadir pass. Looking on the Tigris), Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (nadir pass. The crew’s careful mapping of the Turkish coast has not reached this particular site), Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (this site also still lacking from the “Seven Wonders” list. Looking for Bodrum city, a touch right on the north side of a larger peninsula, between Selcuk/Ephesus and Rhodes. Bodrum is the modern Turkish city built on the ruins of Halicarnassus), and Fort Manuel, SD (LEWIS & CLARK SITE: Missouri Fur Company trading post. Looking on the Missouri river at nadir).
CEO images can be viewed at the websites
See also the website “Space Station Challenge” at
http://voyager.cet.edu/iss/
ISS Orbit (as of this morning, 8:52am EDT [= epoch]):
Mean altitude — 380.9 km
Apogee — 385.3 km
Perigee — 376.5 km
Period — 92.2 min.
Inclination (to Equator) — 51.63 deg
Eccentricity — 0.0006555
Orbits per 24-hr. day — 15.62
Mean altitude loss in last 24 hours — 100 m
Revolutions since FGB/Zarya launch (Nov. ’98) — 27918
For more on ISS orbit and worldwide naked-eye visibility dates/times, see
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/osf/station/viewing/issvis.html
