ISS Status Report No. 50 - 2003

International Space Station Status Report #03-50
4 p.m. CDT, Friday, Oct. 10, 2003
Expedition 7 Crew

Expedition 7 Commander Yuri Malenchenko and NASA International Space Station
Science Officer Ed Lu formally began preparations to come home this week,
while continuing to work on several science experiments.

Flight controllers in Houston and Moscow began inserting about an hour a day
into the crew's timeline to concentrate on preparations for their return to
Earth on Oct. 28. Malencheno and Lu will ride home in the Soyuz that
delivered them to the Station and is docked to a port on the Zarya control
module.

Thursday, the duo put on their Sokol launch and reentry suits and measured
how well they fit into their custom seat-liners, which help absorb shock
during the reentry and brake rocket-aided landing. The fit check is required
because astronauts gain additional height during long-duration stays on
orbit as the absence of gravity allows their spines to stretch slightly.

Similar fit checks were under way at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center
in Star City, Russia, for Expedition 8 Commander and Science Officer Michael
Foale and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri. Along with Spaniard Pedro Duque,
who is flying to the Station under a commercial contract between the
European Space Agency and the Russian Aviation and Space Agency. The trio is
making final preparations for launch aboard another Soyuz at 12:37 a.m. CDT
Oct. 18 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Friday, the two crews had an opportunity to converse by teleconference about
the upcoming week of joint operations, handover activities and scientific
investigations. The Expedition 7 crew also reviewed computer training
lessons on the operation of the Chibis lower body negative pressure device
that will be used by Malenchenko as part of his Russian protocol for return
to gravity.

Lu spent time inside the U.S. Destiny laboratory checking out acceleration
sensor systems and monitors, and making electrical connections as part of
the In Space Soldering Investigation, or ISSI. That experiment is designed
provide information useful to future Station assembly and maintenance work,
as well as fundamental scientific information about the role surface tension
plays in soldering on Earth. He also exchanged ideas with Dr. Joshua
Zimmerberg from the National Institutes of Health about a Fluid Dynamics
Investigation, about how to alleviate problems with mixing samples for
tissue growth experiments in the Station's bioreactor, which allows
three-dimensional tissue cells, like those in the human body, to grow.

Late in the week, one of the remote power controller modules that is used to
route electricity and data throughout the station experienced a failure in
one of its circuits. The affected circuit is for the Destiny Laboratory's
video switching unit. The failure poses no serious obstacles for the crew or
the upcoming Soyuz rendezvous and docking, but does disable a camera port in
Destiny and eliminate some redundancy on board. Flight controllers are
working on a plan to troubleshoot the failure and possibly replace the
module.

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://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 Oct. 17 or sooner if events
warrant.

-end-



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Jacques :-)

Editor: www.spacepatches.info