XA/EVA Project Office Weekly Activity Report September 14, 2000
Increment 2 Baselines
The Increment 2 EVA baseline review was presented to the EVA CCB on September 8th, 2000. The Increment 2 crew consists of Yuri Usachev (CMDR), Jim Voss and Susan Helms. They will launch on February 15, 2001 on flight 5A.1 (STS 102.). There are two EVA’s scheduled during Stage 5A.1, which primarily consist of assembly critical tasks for activating the Docking Compartment. Significant tasks in these EVA’s include installing Strela 2 on the Docking Compartment and the installation of Kurs cables and antennas. Two additional EVA’s are scheduled during Stage 6A to install science payloads and enhancements to the vehicle. Examples of tasks scheduled for these EVA’s include the installation of Ham Radio antennas on the SM, and science packages such as Platan-M. All four scheduled EVA’s will be performed in Orlan spacesuits. The Increment 2 crew will depart from the ISS in June of 2001 on flight 7A.1 (STS 105).
PCU anomaly-EMU evaluation
The EVA Project Office continues to manage the effort to evaluate the operational scenarios associated with post 4A EVA sorties should the ISS Plasma Contactor Units (PCU’s) experience a failure. Material testing at a MSFC test facility was conducted to quantify risk related to this concern and have been evaluated. Preliminary results indicate that the suit material can with stand the environment created should a PCU fail. Other analysis related to potential catastrophic events mainly with respect to electrical hazards generated by the PCU are continuing with near term completion goals set to support the quick turn-around requested by the ISS. This team is targeting resolution of issues prior to the 3A CoFR2 presentation should any design changes to the ISS hardware become a necessity.
EMU O2 Contamination Recovery Status – Update 9/12
The pace of refurbishment of Secondary Oxygen Packages for future flights and human thermal vacuum runs was temporarily slowed down due to GSE issues at Hamilton Sundstrand. Compressors in two of the primary test stands were considered to be credible risks as a contamination source. These units were therefore disassembled and refurbished. This has delayed the cleaning of the next three SOP regulators to be used with the EMUs reserved for STS-92 and EVA Test Article (ETA) chamber runs. To support flight, plans are currently in place to de-stow the SOPs off of the STS-106 EMUs 24 hours after landing at KSC. Two of the STS-106 SOP units will be re-used for STS-92 and processed completely at KSC. The next refurbished SOP is due to be on dock at USA by 9/18. This unit will support both ETA chamber runs needed to accept two flight EMUs and eventually the STS-92 flight as the third SOP.
STS-106 EVA
STS-106 EVA was successfully completed with the duration of 6 hours and 14 minutes. The docking target was deployed successfully with no anomalies. The crew noted that the pyro had successfully fired, and the target was deployed approximately 1cm. There was no resistance in the deploy, and the crew reported that the target locked firmly in the deploy position. The magnetometer installation and the gap spanner installation were successfully completed with no issues with the magnetometer installation. The gap spanner was positioned in a slightly different location to improve security and concurred upon real time by Russian EVA personnel. EPS cable, TV-C&DH cable and Orlan transit cable were all installed with no anomalies. The crew noted that some cables did require minor rerouting as compared to the training configuration. Photos of the service module solar array were taken by the crew during the EVA to document the array section that did not deploy.
Original Signed By:
Gregory J. Harbaugh
Manager