[sarex] ISS STATUS REPORT #04-22

[Arthur Z Rowe <n1orc@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Submitted by Arthur - N1ORC - Amsat #31468

*International Space Station Status Report #04-22*
*3 p.m. CDT, Friday, April 23, 2004*
*Expedition 8 Crew*

New crewmembers aboard the International Space Station settled into a 
routine of handover briefings and scientific experiments after their 
arrival early Wednesday.

Expedition 9's Commander Gennady Padalka and NASA ISS Science Officer 
Mike Fincke docked their ISS Soyuz 8 spacecraft to the nadir port of the 
Zarya Control Module at 12:01 a.m. CDT Wednesday. They opened hatches 
and boarded the station about an hour later, beginning a six-month stay.

With them on the Soyuz was European Space Agency Astronaut Andre Kuipers 
of the Netherlands, who will spend nine days aboard the Station 
conducting scientific investigations. Kuipers will return to Earth with 
Expedition 8's Commander Michael Foale and Flight Engineer Alexander 
Kaleri. Foale and Kaleri arrived on the Station last October 20.

Their ISS Soyuz 7 capsule is scheduled to undock from the Station's Pirs 
Docking Compartment, where it has been during Expedition 8's stay on the 
Station, at 3:52 p.m. CDT April 29. The landing is scheduled for 7:10 
p.m. CDT the same day on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

Early Thursday, during their Daily Planning Conference, crewmembers were 
told that one of the Station's three operating Control Moment 
Gyroscopes, CMG 2, had gone off line at about 3:20 p.m. CDT on 
Wednesday. The CMGs use power from the solar arrays to control the 
Station's orientation. Flight controllers traced the problem to a Remote 
Power Controller Module (RPCM), a kind of remotely controlled circuit 
breaker, that had malfunctioned and cut off power to the gyroscope. The 
RPCM is mounted on the top of the Station's central truss segment, above 
the U.S. Laboratory Destiny.

Two CMGs continue to operate well and are sufficient for controlling the 
Station's orientiation until the RPCM can be replaced. Flight 
controllers have begun planning a spacewalk that will likely be 
conducted sometime in the next month to replace the RPCM with a spare 
unit and restore operation of CMG-2. A spare RPCM is aboard the Station.

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 after E8's landing on 
Thursday, April 29, or earlier if events warrant.

###



----
Via the sarex mailing list at AMSAT.ORG courtesy of AMSAT-NA.
To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe sarex" to Majordomo@amsat.org