International Space Station Status Report #35 - 2005

Report #35
4:00 p.m. CDT, Friday, July 8, 2005
Mission Control Center, Houston

After a light duty three-day holiday weekend, the International Space
Station Expedition 11 crew returned to work for a short, but intense week of
science experiments, spacesuit preparations and packing for the upcoming
Space Shuttle mission.

Commander Sergei Krikalev and NASA Science Officer John Phillips spent much
of their time this week gathering and packing items on board to be returned
in the Raffaello Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) during Discovery's
visit to the Station next week. The MPLM will weigh 18,166 pounds when it is
launched aboard Discovery and 19,745 pounds when it returns, after supplies
for the Station have been unloaded and unneeded gear loaded. The crew also
made room for additional stowage in the Quest Airlock to be available during
the docked operations. With a Wednesday launch, the Shuttle will dock with
the Station on July 16.

Three spacewalks are scheduled during the mission using U.S. spacesuits. To
maximize the efficiency of the batteries, Phillips conducted a series of
charging and discharging cycles of the spacesuit batteries this week.

On Tuesday, the Space Station was raised nearly 4 miles in order to better
position the complex for the Space Shuttle rendezvous. Engines on the docked
Progress vehicle were fired for just over seven minutes, increasing the
amount of days the Shuttle can launch and rendezvous on the third day of the
mission.

Station television cameras captured video as it passed over then Tropical
Storm Dennis. Late Wednesday, cameras captured views of the storm as the
Station passed over the Caribbean, south of Haiti. Additional sighting
opportunities for Hurricane Dennis are anticipated over the weekend and will
be provided next week.

Throughout the week, the crew had numerous other Earth observation and photo
opportunities including sightings of Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya, the Nile
River Delta in Egypt, and Hong Kong.

Krikalev repressurized the Station atmosphere using oxygen from the newly
arrived Progress vehicle. He also transferred water from tanks on the
Progress to tanks in the Service Module.

Phillips and Krikalev conducted the second of three sessions with the Renal
Stone experiment. The experiment investigates whether potassium citrate can
be used as a countermeasure to minimize the risk of kidney stone formation
in space.

The crew ended its week with a live news conference with journalists at
NASA's Johnson Space Center and Kennedy Space Center. The weekend includes
mostly off-duty time as well as routine housekeeping activities and
conferences with management and support staff.

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

http://www.nasa.gov/station

ISS status reports will not be issued during the STS-114 Space Shuttle
mission. Station activities will be included in the Shuttle mission status
reports, which are planned twice daily or as events warrant.





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Jacques :-)

www.spacepatches.info