Space Station Science Operations status report for the week ending June 13, 2001
Status Report: 01-206
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
Expedition Two Science Operations
Weekly Science Status Report
Wednesday, June 13, 2001
All science payloads on board the International Space Station have been activated as of this week.
On Tuesday, June 12, Flight Engineer Jim Voss activated the Active Rack Isolation System International Space Station Characterization Experiment (ARIS-ICE). Many microgravity experiments on the Station require a disturbance-free environment. ARIS — an experimental system of sensors, actuators and pushrods in the EXPRESS Rack 2 – is designed to damp out vibrations caused by equipment vibrations and crew activities such as exercise. When sensors detect disturbances from the Station, the actuators work to counter the effects of vibrations by delivering a reactive force between the payload rack and the laboratory module, acting like a powered, smart shock absorber.
ARIS ICE is a separate experiment designed to characterize the performance of the ARIS vibration damping equipment. It includes a “shaker unit” that provides a precise, measurable disturbance to simulate possible disturbances in the Station environment.
“We’re pretty happy about what happened,” said Jim Allen, ARIS-ICE project lead and payload developer with The Boeing Co. of Houston. “Power and data cables for the Payload On-orbit Processor were installed and it was successfully activated for the first time. Several commands to the processor were successfully uplinked and executed, and initial checkout tests started Tuesday. ARIS itself will be activated later this week or early next week.”
Tests of the experimental system will be conducted daily in 16- and 24-hour blocks over a period of several weeks during Expeditions 2, 3 and 4.
With activation of ARIS-ICE, all experiments on the Station have been activated or completed. A vibration sensor called the Space Acceleration Measurement System experiment has been activated, although not all of its sensors are yet activated. One more Expedition Two payload – a passive protein crystal growth experiment — is scheduled to arrive on the 7A Station assembly mission.
Also Tuesday, Flight Engineer Susan Helms activated the Ultrasound Imaging System, located in the Human Research Facility, a payload rack dedicated to studying the physical, chemical and behavioral effects of spaceflight on humans. The system provides three-dimensional image enlargement of the heart and other organs, muscles and blood vessels. Helms performed a physical evaluation of the imager by holding the sensor unit to her carotid artery.
On Monday, June 11, Susan Helms activated the fourth of six growth cylinders in the Protein Crystal Growth Single Thermal Enclosure System (PCG-STES) Unit 10. She was scheduled to activate the fifth cylinder today. The sixth cylinder is a control unit and will not be activated. This experiment is scheduled to be completed and deactivated on Friday, June 15. The goal of this experiment is to use the microgravity environment of the Station to grow larger and more perfect biological materials than is possible on Earth. By analyzing these materials back on Earth, scientists hope to gain new insights into biological functions important in the fields of medicine, agriculture, the environment and other biosciences.
An identical unit called PCG-STES Unit 9 was activated earlier in Expedition Two and continues to function normally. A total of 756 biological crystal experiments will be housed in the two STES units.
During the past week, the crew has continued to ensure that all the experiments running in the Destiny laboratory module are operating correctly. They have kept portable radiation sensors recharged and downloaded their data to a laptop computer for transmitting later to the ground. Video from the Advanced Astroculture plant growth experiment showed that the seedlings have begun to flower. On a list of optional items for the crew to do this week if their schedule permits are additional tests with the MACE II space structures experiment and activities with the lab’s three major radiation monitoring experiments.
