STS-105 Status Report #21 – 21 Aug 2001 – 5:00 AM CDT
With Discovery
500 miles ahead of the International Space Station, and increasing that
distance by more than 50 miles with each orbit of the Earth, the STS-105
and returning Expedition Two crewmembers are preparing for a Wednesday
landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Discovery Commander
Scott Horowitz, Pilot Rick Sturckow, and Mission Specialists Pat Forrester
and Dan Barry, along with Expedition Two crewmembers Commander Yury
Usachev, and Astronauts Jim Voss and Susan Helms, were awakened at 3:10
a.m. CDT to the sounds of ìEast Bound and Downî by Jerry Reed, at the
request of their Houston-based training team.
Activities on
board Discovery will focus on tomorrowís planned return trip to Earth
as the astronauts stow away the equipment and hardware used during their
mission and verify the performance of Discoveryís landing systems. Horowitz,
Sturckow and Barry will conduct the standard day-before-landing checkouts
of the flight control surfaces, the rudder and flaps that will control
the shuttle during its descent through the atmosphere.
Later in the day,
they will set up three recumbent seats on Discoveryís middeck for use
by the returning Expedition Two crewmembers during Wednesdayís re-entry.
The seats are designed to minimize the forces of reentry after their
more than five months in space.
Expedition Three
crewmembers Frank Culbertson, Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin,
were awakened about 12:30 a.m. to begin their first day alone aboard
the space station. The dayís plan includes activation and checkout of
Express Rack 4 – one of two scientific racks for the U.S. laboratory
Destiny delivered during STS-105 – exercise and a review of plans for
unloading the next Russian unpiloted cargo carrier, Progress 5, scheduled
to arrive at the station Thursday morning.
Crewmembers also
activated the current Progress vehicle, docked at the rear of the stationís
Zvezda module, before closing the hatches that connect it to the station.
Progress 4 is scheduled to be undocked from the station shortly after
1 a.m. Wednesday. The new Progress supply ship – Progress 5 – was launched
on a Soyuz rocket at 4:24 a.m. today from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan and is scheduled to dock at the station about 5 a.m. Thursday
with its cargo of fuel, food and equipment.
Discovery is circling
the Earth every 90 minutes at an average altitude of about 240 statute
miles. Systems aboard the shuttle and the International Space Station
are functioning well. The next mission status report will be issued
about 6 p.m. today, or as events warrant.
