NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 29 August 2004
SpaceRef note: This NASA Headquarters internal status report, as presented here, contains additional, original material produced by SpaceRef.com (copyright © 2004) to enhance access to related status reports and NASA activities.
All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except those noted previously or below. Sunday — crew rest day. Ahead: Week 18 for Expedition 9. And it’s Day 134 in space for Expedition 9. Also: Day 1366 of permanent human station residency and Day 2110 since first ISS launch (FGB/Zarya). By now, the current crew has traveled a distance of 88.2 million km (55.15 million mi.) — or roughly 259 times the distance Earth-Moon. Since FGB launch, the ISS has covered 1.4 billion km (871 million miles) in 32,983 Earth orbits.
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Previous Reports ISS On-orbit Status [HQ] |
CDR Padalka continued preparations for EVA-11 next Friday (9/3) by terminating the recharge of the first 825M3 Orlan backpack battery in the DC-1 docking compartment’s battery-charging unit (ZU-S), then initiating it on the second battery.
Gennady also conducted the routine inspection of the SM’s SOZh environment control & life support system with the weekly data collection of toilet flush counter readings, inspection of the SP urine collection and pretreat assembly, and SVO water supply status counter readings, all for calldown to TsUP/Moscow.
FE/SO Fincke held a private family conference (PFC) via S-band/audio and Ku-band/NetMeeting video.
The CDR had two optional tasks on his Russian task list today, leading off with the periodic inspection of the BIO-5 Rasteniya-2 (“Plants-2”) experiment which researches growth and development of plants under spaceflight conditions in the Lada-5 greenhouse.
As a second task-listed job, Padalka concluded the latest run of the Molniya-SM/LSO experiment by downloading measurements recorded during the recent (8/21-24) session from the LSO memory to HDD (hard-disk drive) on the EGE-1 laptop for return to Earth on 8S. [Objective of Molniya-SM, similar to the French LSO experiment, is to catch and record incidental storm phenomena and other related events in the Earth’s equatorial regions.]
The crew performed its regular daily physical exercise on TVIS treadmill, RED resistive exerciser, and VELO stationary bike with load trainer.
Major upcoming events:
- • EVA-11 — 9/3 (hatch open 12:50pm EDT);
- • Soyuz 9S launch — 10/9;
- • Soyuz 9S dock — 10/11;
- • Soyuz 8S undock/land — 10/19;
- • Soyuz 9S relocate — 11/18;
- • Progress 16P launch — 11/24.
Expedition 9 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.
Today’s optional CEO photo targets, limited in the current XPOP attitude by flight rule constraints on the use of the science window, which is available for only ~1/4 of each orbit when not facing forward (in “ram”), were Internal waves, Azores Islands – Mid Atlantic (this pass provided a good opportunity for internal wave imagery to the south of the Azores. The sunglint point was to the left and slightly forward of track. Some interesting wave features within the islands themselves may have been visible), Hurricane Frances, Central Atlantic (Dynamic event. Frances should have been at least a Category 2 storm at this time. The eye was located approximately 5 degrees to the left of track), and Internal waves, Tuamotu Archipelago (clear weather provided a good opportunity for internal waves within the Archipelago. The sunglint point was to the left of track and slightly behind the ISS).
CEO images can be viewed at these websites:
See also the website “Space Station Challenge” at:
To view the latest photos taken by the expedition 9 crew visit:
- http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-9/ndxpage1.html at NASA’s Human Spaceflight website.
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ISS Orbit (as of this morning, 7:34am EDT [= epoch]):
- Mean altitude — 361.4 km
- Apogee height — 365.2 km
- Perigee height — 357.6 km
- Period — 91.77 min.
- Inclination (to Equator) — 51.64 deg
- Eccentricity — 0.0005627
- Solar Beta Angle — 25.4 deg (magnitude increasing)
- Orbits per 24-hr. day — 15.69
- Mean altitude loss in last 24 hours — 75 m
- Revolutions since FGB/Zarya launch (Nov. ’98) — 32983
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.
