NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 20 November 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 — day off for Bill McArthur & Valery Tokarev, except for housekeeping and voluntary work. Ahead: Week 7 for Expedition 12.
Birthday for ISS! Today the station has its 7th Anniversary, counted from launch of the first station element, the FGB “Zarya” (Dawn) Control Module, at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a Proton-K rocket on Mission 1A/R. After Zarya’s orbital checkout, the second element, the U.S.-built Node “Unity”, followed on the Shuttle Endeavour, launched on 12/4/98 at KSC. The Shuttle crew attached Unity and Zarya during a highly successful 12-day mission, beginning the station’s orbital construction.
The crew completed the regular weekly three-hour task of thorough station cleaning, wearing protective garment. [“Uborka”, usually done every Saturday, includes removal of food waste products, cleaning of compartments with vacuum cleaner, damp cleaning of the Service Module (SM) dining table, other surfaces and the CDR’s sleep station with “Fungistat” disinfectant and cleaning fan screens to avoid temperature rises.]
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With the Elektron still powered down, FE Valery Tokarev serviced the Russian BMP Harmful Impurities Removal System, starting the “bake-out” cycle to vacuum on the second absorbent bed of the regenerable dual-channel filtration system. Before sleep time today, the bake-out will be terminated. [Regeneration of each of the two cartridges takes about 12 hours and is conducted only during crew awake periods. The BMP currently still uses the same vacuum vent valve for regeneration as the Elektron (the latter for venting hydrogen).]
Valery also did the daily routine maintenance of the SM’s environment control & life support system (SOZh), including its toilet system (ASU) plus the weekly inspection of the air/liquid condensate separator apparatus (BRPK) as well as the weekly collection of the toilet flush (SP) counter and water supply (SVO) readings for calldown to TsUP/Moscow.
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The crewmembers completed their regular 2.5-hr. physical exercise program on the TVIS treadmill, RED (Resistive Exercise Device) 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 and one hour on VELO plus load trainer (today: Day 1 of the first set).]
Working from his voluntary “job jar” task list, Tokarev downloaded system data/log files of the RokvISS experiment from the BSPN payload server to the ISS Wiener laptop and onto a FlashCard, to be dumped to the ground for analysis. [RokvISS is a German remote-controlled robotics experiment installed externally on the SM Working Compartment (RO) on the URM-D (Universal Work Platform) with a baseplate (FP-20). The hardware & experiment status data dump is required periodically to analyze RokvISS payload conditions. The data transfer was preceded by a comm check between the ISS Wiener laptop and the BSPN.]
At ~2:20pm EST, CDR McArthur had his weekly PFC (private family conference) via S-band/audio and Ku-band/MS-NetMeeting video.
No CEO (Crew Earth Observation) 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:
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:
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.
Upcoming Events (all dates Eastern):
- 12/20/05 — Progress M-54/19P undocking & reentry
- 12/21/05 — Progress M-55/20P launch
- 12/23/05 — Progress M-55/20P docking
- 01/09/06 — 100 days for Expedition 12.
- end-Jan. /06 — EVA-15 (Russian; date TBD).
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.
