NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 4 September 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 Sergei Krikalev & John Phillips, except for some housekeeping and voluntary tasks.  Ahead:  Week 20 for Increment 11. 

As part of today’s morning inspection after wake-up, CDR Krikalev did the periodic checkup behind panel 139 in the Service Module (SM) on a fluid connector of the urine collection system, checking for potential moisture.

Sergei also performed the daily routine maintenance of the SM’s environment control & life support system (SOZh), which today included the weekly collection of the toilet flush (SP) counter and water supply (SVO) readings for calldown to TsUP/Moscow.

Both crewmembers conducted their regular 2.5-hr. physical exercise program on the TVIS treadmill, RED resistive machine and VELO bike with bungee cord load trainer.   [Sergei’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 2 of a new set).]

Working off his “time available” task list, Sergei completed the regular daily inspection of the BIO-5 Rasteniya-2 (“Plants-2”) experiment, including filling its water canister for the Lada-7 greenhouse as required.

Also off the Russian job list, the CDR conducted another run of the “Diatomeya” ocean observations program, using the DSR PD-150P video camera on SM window #7 and Nikon F5 digital still camera with 24/85-mm lens from window #8 to obtain data characterizing the geography of highly productive zones in oceanic areas and the observation conditions at the start of spring in Southern hemisphere.   [Observation and imagery targets are color-contrasting formations in aquatic areas along the observation track, drifting icebergs and large chunks of pack-ice (northern propagation boundary), littoral aquatic areas of islands, cloud vortices, jetstream clouds; cloud pack fields, accumulations of large cumulo-nimbus clouds, other structural irregularities in the oceanic cloud field, and anomalies of oceanic reference plane surface.  Today’s observations focused in the Indian Ocean on the “Roaring Forties” area, typhoon-prone central and eastern parts of the ocean, the Sumatra foreshore, dynamically active aquatic areas south of Africa and east of Madagascar, aquatic areas of Macquarie and Maldives islands, Gulf of Mannar, Polk Straits, Bay of Bengal; and in the South Atlantic on Argentinean shelf plate, highly productive aquatic areas of open ocean in the divergence zone of  West Wind Drift, underwater South-Atlantic Ridge region, southwestern African foreshore.] 

As a third item on his task list for today, the CDR first downloaded system data/log files of the BSPN payload server, from the ROKVISS experiment, to the Wiener for analysis on the ground.  Later, he completed the regular transfer of “Matryoshka” payload data from the BSPN via the ISS Wiener laptop to a PCMCIA flash card for subsequent downlink on OCA comm, controlling the process with a program called ShellForKE on the Wiener. [Matryoshka automatically takes radiation measurements in the SM and DC-1 docking compartment for studies of on-orbit radiation and long-term dose accumulation, using six SPD dosimeters deployed throughout the Russian segment.]

At ~5:30am EDT, Sergei had his weekly PFC (private family conference) via S-band/audio and Ku-band/NetMeeting video.

No CEO photo targets uplinked today.

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 11 crew visit:

• http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-11/ndxpage1.html at NASA’s Human Spaceflight website.

Expedition 11 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, 11:00am EDT [= epoch]):

• Mean altitude — 351.6 km
• Apogee height — 352.7 km
• Perigee height — 350.5 km
• Period — 91.57 min.
• Inclination (to Equator) — 51.64 deg
• Eccentricity — 0.0001645
• Solar Beta Angle — 44.2 deg (magnitude decreasing)
• Orbits per 24-hr. day — 15.72
• Mean altitude loss in last 24 hours — 175 m
• Revolutions since FGB/Zarya launch (Nov. 98) – 38817

Upcoming Events (all times EDT):

• 09/07/05 — Progress M-53/18P undocking (6:23am)
• 09/08/05 — Progress M-54/19P launch (9:07:50am)
• 09/10/05 — Progress M-54/19P docking (10:50am).

Backup Opportunities:

• 09/10/05 — 19P launch  (8:19:36am)
• 09/12/05 — 19P docking (10:24am).

19P is manifested to deliver to the ISS the following cargo:  800 kg propellants; 110 kg gas (oxygen/air, thanks to 14 additional gas tanks installed by RSC-Energia externally for an extra delivery capability of 60 kg O2); 300 kg water; 1230 kg dry cargo, comprising 139 Russian cargo items (including a new Elektron-VM Liquid Unit and 16 SFOG candles) and 83 NASA items (including two IBM 760XD laptops).

• 09/30/05 — Soyuz TMA-7/11S launch (~11:54pm)
• 10/03/05 — Soyuz TMA-7/11S docking (~1:20am)
• 10/11/05 — Soyuz TMA-6/10S landing (~9:06pm)
• 10/18/05 – ISS Reboost
• 11/18/05 — Soyuz TMA-7/11S relocation (from DC-1 to FGB nadir port)
• 12/21/05 – Progress M-55/20P launch
• 12/23/05 — Progress M-55/20P docking.

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.