Oct. 13, 2006
Grey Hautaluoma
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0668
James Hartsfield
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
STATUS REPORT: SS06-044
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION STATUS REPORT: SS06-044
The International Space Station’s Expedition 14 crew went for a short
ride this week, performed maintenance and experiments aboard the
growing outpost and celebrated one crew member’s 100th day in space.
Station Commander and NASA Science Officer Mike Lopez-Alegria and
flight engineers Mikhail Tyurin and Thomas Reiter boarded their Soyuz
spacecraft and flew it from one docking port to another. The
relocation was a routine procedure conducted ahead of the launch and
arrival of the next Progress supply ship, scheduled for later this
month.
With Tyurin at the controls on Tuesday, the Soyuz undocked from the
aft position of the Zvezda module at 3:14 p.m. EDT and docked to the
Zarya control module’s Earth-facing docking port at 3:34 p.m. EDT.
The 23rd Progress vehicle will launch Oct. 23 from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It will dock to the vacated Zvezda port
three days later, delivering supplies to the crew.
More than three weeks into a six-month stay, Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin
are settling in to the routine of life in microgravity. They joined
Reiter in celebrating his 100th day in space since his launch aboard
the Space Shuttle Discovery July 4. Reiter, a European Space Agency
astronaut, will return home aboard Discovery in December during the
STS-116 mission. Discovery will bring NASA astronaut Suni Williams as
Reiter’s replacement to the station during that flight.
Oxygen is being supplied in the station cabin by tanks on the outside
of the U.S. Quest Airlock while an onboard Russian oxygen-generation
system, called the Elektron, is not working. Additional parts to
repair the Elektron are expected to be among the supplies arriving
late this month on Progress.
The station’s orientation is being managed by three of the four
electrically driven Control Moment Gyroscopes (CMGs). One gyroscope,
designated CMG 3, was shut down after exhibiting intermittently high
vibrations early Monday. Three gyros are sufficient to orient the
station, and there has been no impact to the safety or operation of
the station due to the shut down of CMG 3.
Flight controllers are evaluating plans for CMG 3 and any changes that
might be needed to assembly operations during the December mission of
Space Shuttle Discovery. During that mission alternating systems on
the station will be powered off as the complex is rewired to bring
online new supplies of electricity from the recently added solar
arrays. Steering jets could be used to control the station’s
orientation if needed as gyroscopes are powered down during those
procedures.
This week the crew also performed routine medical checks and took
water samples while loading the docked Progress vehicle with unneeded
items. Lopez-Alegria swapped a water separator in the Quest Airlock’s
Common Cabin Air Assembly to ensure a filter doesn’t become clogged.
The maintenance procedure was previously performed by the Expedition
5 crew.
The next status report will be issued Friday, Oct. 20. For more
information about the crew’s activities and station sighting
opportunities, visit:
-end-