NASA Space Station Status Report 26 Apr 2004
The five-crew members aboard the International Space
Station are busy with handover briefings and scientific
experiments following their arrival early last Wednesday. The
outgoing Expedition 8 crew and incoming Expedition 9 crew
held a Change of Command Ceremony today.
Expedition 9 Commander Gennady Padalka and NASA ISS Science
Officer Mike Fincke docked their Soyuz spacecraft to the port
of the Zarya Control Module at 1:01 a.m. EDT Wednesday April
21. They opened hatches and boarded the Station about an hour
later, beginning their six-month stay.
With them on the Soyuz was European Space Agency Astronaut
Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands. He will spend nine days
aboard the Station conducting scientific investigations.
Kuipers will return to Earth with Expedition 8 Commander
Michael Foale and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri. Foale and
Kaleri arrived on the Station October 20, 2003.
The Expedition 8 Soyuz capsule is scheduled to undock from
the Pirs Docking Compartment, where it has been during their
mission, at 4:52 p.m. EDT, Thursday. The landing is scheduled
for Thursday night at 9:09 p.m. EDT, on the steppes of
Kazakhstan.
Early last Thursday, during their Daily Planning Conference,
crewmembers were told one of the Station’s three operating
Control Moment Gyroscopes, CMG 2, had gone off line at about
4:20 p.m. EDT on Wednesday. The CMGs use power from the solar
arrays to control the Station’s orientation. Flight
controllers traced the problem to a Remote Power Controller
Module (RPCM), a kind of remotely controlled circuit breaker
that had malfunctioned and cut off power to the gyroscope.
The RPCM is mounted on the top of the Station’s central truss
segment, above the U.S. Laboratory Destiny.
Two CMGs continue to operate and are sufficient for
controlling the Station’s orientation until the RPCM is
replaced. Flight controllers are planning a spacewalk. It
will likely happen within the next month. Crewmen will
replace the RPCM with a spare unit and restore operation of
CMG-2. A spare RPCM is aboard the Station.
For information about NASA and agency missions on the
Internet, visit:
Information about crew activities on the Space Station,
future launch dates, and Station sighting opportunities from
Earth, is available on the Internet at:
Details about Station science operations are available on an
Internet site administered by the Payload Operations Center
at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.,
at:
