Spacewalkers to Prepare for New Visitor
07.30.04

International Space Station crewmembers will start rolling out the welcome
mat for the new Automated Transfer Vehicle with a spacewalk early Tuesday.

The ATV is an unpiloted cargo carrier like the Russian Progress supply
vehicles, but has a cargo capacity about 2-1/2 times that of a Progress.
During the Aug. 3 spacewalk Expedition 9 Commander Gennady Padalka and NASA
ISS Science Officer Mike Fincke will install antennas and laser reflectors
to help the ATV dock to the rear of the Zvezda Service Module.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) ATV is scheduled for its first launch in
the fall of 2005 aboard an ESA Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana. In
addition to carrying cargo, including fuel, water, oxygen and nitrogen, it
also can reboost the Station. Like the Progress, the ATV will burn up when
it re-enters the atmosphere.

The spacewalk is scheduled to last almost six hours and is to begin about
3:10 a.m. EDT. Spacewalkers will use the airlock of the Russian Pirs Docking
Compartment and wear Russian Orlan spacesuits. Padalka, making his fifth
spacewalk, will wear the suit with red stripes while Fincke, on his third
spacewalk, will wear the suit with blue stripes.

The crewmembers will move to the rear of Zvezda, vacated by ISS Progress 14
on Friday. Their first task is to replace an SKK experiment container that
exposes materials to the space environment and replace it with another. Next
they will replace a Kromka experiment, which measures contamination from
thruster firings.

Then attention turns to ATV-related devices. Padalka and Fincke will install
two antennas, then replace three laser reflectors with three more advanced
versions than the ones launched with Zvezda in 2000. One three-dimensional
reflector will replace three other old reflectors. Additional ATV
preparations will be done during a subsequent spacewalk.

They'll remove another materials experiment, Platan, and photograph the
MPAC-SEEDS experiment, which studies micro-meteor impacts. Before returning
to the airlock, they also will disconnect a cable to a camera that will be
replaced in a future spacewalk.

Several U.S. tools will be used by the spacewalkers, including a
body-restraint tether used in their most recent spacewalk, and a tool
carrier.

This will be the 55th spacewalk for ISS assembly and maintenance. It is the
30th from the Station itself and the 12th from Pirs.


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Jacques :-)

www.spacepatches.info