Status Report

NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 27 Sep 2003

By SpaceRef Editor

September 27, 2003

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

NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 27 Sep 2003 — iss

All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted previously or below. Saturday, the first of two off-duty days for the crew (except for standard maintenance and optional task list jobs).

Floating through their voluminous residence after wake-up at the regular 2:00am EDT, morning inspection, hygiene and breakfast, the two crewmembers performed the regular weekly 3-hr. housecleaning. [“Uborka stantsii” focuses on removal of food waste products, cleaning of compartments with vacuum cleaner, wet cleaning of the Service Module (SM) dining table and other surfaces with disinfectants (“Fungistat”) and cleaning of fan screens to avoid temperature rises.]

FE/SO Ed Lu performed the regular once-a-week maintenance reboot on the operational PCS (portable computer system) laptops in the station.

CDR Yuri Malenchenko then completed the daily routine maintenance on the SM’s SOZh life support system, while Ed Lu prepared the daily IMS (inventory management system) delta file for automatic export/import to update the database.

Malenchenko also conducted the weekly inspection/maintenance of the BRPK-2 air/liquid condensate separator of the SM’s SRVK water processing system.

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).

Both crewmembers worked out with their daily 2.5-h program of physical exercise, on TVIS treadmill, RED expander, and VELO cycle with load trainer.

The TVM Terminal Computer system in the SM has lost string #2 out of the set of three.

Weekly Science Update (Expedition Seven — 21st):

This was again a very busy week for payloads on ISS, with the crew doing an outstanding job.

GASMAP: The next health check is in October.

Human Research Facility/Workstation (HRF WS): Continuing.

Ultrasound (USND): The crew did an exceptional job on 9/25 in helping to evaluate possibilities and potentials for performing echocardiography during exercise in zero-G.

Hand Posture Analyzer (HPA): Next session will be scheduled shortly before end of Exp. 7.

Pore Formation and Mobility Investigation (PFMI): One of the things accomplished in the experiment this week was to establish a liquid zone in the middle of the sample, leaving the two ends solid. As the liquid cooled, the growth of the solidifying dendrites towards each other could be observed. PFMI ops for this Increment are now complete. Seven samples were successfully processed, and the ground team is excited about the science obtained.

Space Acceleration Measurement System (SAMS): SAMS is operating nominally and is receiving data from four sensors.

Microgravity Acceleration Measurement System (MAMS): MAMS continues to measure the quasi-steady acceleration environment using the OSS sensor. The HiRAP sensor and the SAMS sensor in the MSG were used for several days to support the final PFMI sample processing operations.

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): Initial images from activities earlier this week were analyzed. Since the pixel count received on the ground was not quite what investigators were hoping for, some adjustments were made to the camera set-up and two procedures combined into one, for performing next week. New settings were uplinked for the crew.

Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle School Students (EarthKAM): Activities are completed for Increment 7.

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. A command was issued to CGBA today to remove old data files in order to maintain proper disk storage space. GCF (Granada Crystallization Facility) will remain in CGBA until returning on 6S.

Educational Payload Operations (EPO): Looking forward to the center-of-mass demonstration planned for next week.

Crew Earth Observation (CEO): A near-perfect ISS/CEO image of the beautiful South Pacific island of Moorea near Tahiti is this weekend’s publication selected for Earth Observatory (link see below). There have been relatively few target requirements this past ten days as daylight was mostly in the Southern Hemisphere. The crew took great context views of the atolls of Tuamoto Archipelago, but now some detailed, long-lens views are desired. On their own initiative, the crew also took wonderfully detailed views of the dynamic Mangoky River in Madagascar that document dramatic changes in the formation of delta islands and in channel/sandbar patterns further upstream. Another awesome site photographed were the intricate details of the Lencois Maranhenses dune field on the northeast coast of Brazil.

Today’s optional CEO (crew earth observation) targets, limited in the current XPOP attitude by flight rule constraints on the use of the Lab nadir/science window, were Patagonian Glaciers (Southern [larger] ice fields were relatively clear. Crew was asked to shoot west- side glaciers of which few images exist due to persistent cloud), Singapore (nadir pass), Osaka, Japan (low sun illumination might have produced a dramatic image over Japan’s Inland Sea and surrounding islands and volcanoes), Chongqing, China (looking right of track on the Chang Jiang [Yangtze River] for this major city. Low visibility from smog was reported for some cities in the Red Basin, but should not affect ISS/CEO views of Chongqing. Any obliques to reveal the smog would, however, be interesting. The Red Basin has the longest continuous record for atmospheric clarity data in the world [since the 1940s]), Taj Mahal, India (nadir and a touch left. The Taj Mahal lies in Agra, a city on the big meandering Yamuna River [New Delhi is larger and was to the crew’s left about 100 miles NW of Agra, also on the Yamuna]. Agra should have been identifiable from its star-shaped pattern of radiating highways and railroads. The Taj Mahal should have stood out as a structure in white marble with formal landscaping layout), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (between the daily clouds, the crew may have seen this hard-to-shoot city left of track on Ethiopia’s high plains. Brown building materials and cloud work against the photographer), Dust, Iran/Afghanistan (Dynamic event. Looking right towards the region with the highest annual count of dust storms on the planet), Amman, Jordan (nadir pass), Tel Aviv, Israel (looking left near the coast), and Tropical Storm Juan, Central Atlantic (Dynamic event. ISS passed to the SE of this newly formed tropical storm, within ~4 deg of what already appeared to be a central eye. Curved bands of cloud have developed on its north and east sides).
CEO images can be viewed at the websites

See also the website “Space Station Challenge” at
http://voyager.cet.edu/iss/

You know you live on the ISS when…
… casual snapshots you take around the house can cause 200 engineers to panic and demand a detailed photo survey of everything you own. (Upbeat uplink from Flight Control).

ISS Orbit (as of this morning, 6:39am EDT [= epoch]):