International Space Station Status Report #35 - 2003

Report #35
4 p.m. CDT, Friday, July 25, 2003
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

The Expedition 7 crew, Commander Yuri Malenchenko and NASA ISS Science
Officer Ed Lu, wound up a busy week with a Canadarm2 session that could lead
to operation of the Station's robotic arm by controllers on the ground
without crew participation.

Today's activity, with Lu working with flight controllers in Houston, began
a little after 3 a.m. CDT. It was a feasibility study. Lu performed task
the ground cannot yet do - operating the latching end effector and
initiating joint motion, for example. The task was completed successfully
before 7 a.m. Results will be used in validation of the concept and in
determining software, hardware or procedural changes that would be needed
for arm control from the ground.

Lu also spent some time working with the Coarsening in Solid Liquid Mixtures
(CSLM) experiment's sample processing units (SPUs) in the Microgravity
Science Glovebox of the U.S. laboratory Destiny. One unit Lu installed was
found to be distorted, so he reinstalled the previous SPU. The CSLM
experiment was delayed from early in the week because of internal humidity
and dew point concerns. The experiment is expected to begin next week. It
will study "coarsening" during which the strength of a material is
reduced. This phenomenon is seen in many materials, including water droplets
in rain clouds and dental fillings. It can weaken high-temperature turbine
blades. Meanwhile, Malenchenko worked for more than two hours to load
discarded items into the Progress 10 unpiloted cargo craft docked at the
rear of the Zvezda Service Module.

Last Monday the crew focused on medical experiments and an inventory by
Malenchenko of 44 Russian medical, food supplement and ointment kits, about
a two-hour task. Tuesday saw additional medical tests and Mission Control
Moscow continued testing a new satellite navigation system antenna. Both
crewmembers took time to answer questions from elementary, middle and high
school students relayed to them by educators at Kennedy Space Center.

After Soyuz descent training and continued work with the week-long process
of space suit batteries conditioning Wednesday, Lu and Malenchenko on
Thursday prepared for today's robotic operations and Malenchenko continued
participation in a Russian study of bioelectrical heart activity while at
rest.

Throughout the week both crewmembers continued regular maintenance
activities on the Station, and performed their daily exercise sessions,
designed to ward off the effects of lengthy exposure to the microgravity
environment of the orbiting laboratory.

NASA announced on Friday that astronaut Michael Foale and Cosmonaut
Alexander Kaleri will be the Expedition 8 crew of the International Space
Station. They are scheduled to launch on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with
European Space Agency astronaut Pedro Duque of Spain on Oct. 18. Duque will
return to Earth with the Expedition 7 crew, which arrived at the station
April 28. Their Soyuz is scheduled to land in Kazakhstan Oct. 28.

Information on the crew's activities on the Space Station, future launch
dates and Station sighting opportunities from anywhere on Earth is available
at:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/

Details on Station science operations can be found on an Internet site
administered by the Payload Operations Center at NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., at:

http://scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov/

The next ISS status report will be issued on Friday, Aug. 1, or sooner if
events warrant.

- -end-




--
----

Jacques :-)

Editor: www.spacepatches.info

------------------------------------------------------