ISS Fan Club

Orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station, the Expedition 16 crew spent Friday wrapping up a busy week with preparations for an upcoming visit from space shuttle Endeavour carrying the station’s new Japanese module.

After a weekly conference between the station crew and the Russian flight control team, Commander Peggy Whitson installed the Centerline Berthing Camera System (CBCS) in the Harmony module. The CBCS will provide visual cues to the astronauts as they install the Japanese Experiment Logistics Module-Pressurized Section (JLP), which is being delivered by Endeavour on the STS-123 mission in March. JLP is the first component of Kibo, the Japanese Experiment Module, to be launched to the station.

As ground support personnel prepared to boost the International Space Station to a higher altitude, the crew aboard the orbital outpost worked with science experiments and reviewed emergency procedures Wednesday.

After completing the morning’s activities and taking a lunch break, the Expedition 16 crew reviewed emergency procedures for the station’s newest addition, the Columbus module. This is a standard procedure for any new module.

Later, Commander Peggy Whitson spoke with reporters in her home state of Iowa.

Engines on the station’s Zvezda service module will fire Thursday at 12:16 a.m. EST for about two minutes, providing a further refinement to the 36-minute burn conducted during docked operations with space shuttle Atlantis on the recent STS-122 mission. This will complete the altitude adjustment needed to optimize rendezvous opportunities with space shuttle Endeavour, scheduled to launch March 11 for STS-123.

Already the largest human-made object orbiting the Earth, the International Space Station continued its on-orbit growth spurt with the addition of the Starboard 5 (S5) truss segment. The S5 was attached at about 1:35 p.m. EDT during STS-118’s first spacewalk.

The S5 will serve as a spacer segment between the Starboard 4 and 6 (S6) segments. The S6 and its solar arrays will be attached during a future shuttle mission. The S5 is the newest piece of the station’s backbone, called the Integrated Truss Structure, which will eventually span the length of a football field and contain four sets of solar arrays.

Expedition 15 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Clay Anderson this week finished preparing their spacesuits for a planned July 23 spacewalk. Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov also continued evaluating the computers on the Russian segment of the International Space Station.

During the U.S. spacewalk, Yurchikhin and Anderson will jettison a support post for an exterior video camera and a 1,400-pound, refrigerator-sized tank that is no longer needed. The tank, known as the Early Ammonia Servicer, was designed to replenish ammonia to the temporary cooling system on the station in the event of a coolant leak.

After the departure of the space shuttle Atlantis, Expedition 15 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov returned to their daily operations aboard the International Space Station this week, while newly arrived Flight Engineer Clay Anderson began conducting scientific experiments.

Complete release at http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/jun/HQ_SS0732_station_status.html

This week, the Expedition 15 crew unpacked new supplies and began preparing for the arrival of the next visiting spacecraft and two upcoming spacewalks at the International Space Station.

The ISS Progress 25 docked to the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module at 12:10 a.m. CDT Tuesday. During the week, the crew began unloading the more than 5,000 pounds of cargo from the supply ship.

Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov prepared for their May 30 and June 6 spacewalks by working on the Pirs Airlock. The cosmonauts will wear Russian Orlan spacesuits to install orbital debris protection panels on the Zvezda Service Module and replace experiments on the module's hull. Mission experts at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, will provide an overview of the spacewalks in a news briefing at 1 p.m. Wednesday, May 23, on NASA Television.

A spacecraft automatically docked to the International Space Station early Tuesday, delivering 2.5 tons of food, fuel and supplies for the residents on board.

The ISS Progress 25 linked up to the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module at 12:10 a.m. CDT Tuesday as the station sailed 208 miles above the Earth off the northeast coast of Australia. Within minutes, hooks and latches engaged between the two spacecraft to form a tight seal. The hatch to the supply ship will be opened overnight to enable its cargo to be unloaded.

Complete release at http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/may/HQ_SS0

A new cargo freighter launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station at 10:25 p.m. CDT Friday with more than 2.5 tons of fuel, air, water and other supplies and equipment aboard.

The ISS Progress 25 unpiloted cargo carrier is scheduled to dock with the station Tuesday at 12:10 a.m., bringing more than 1,050 pounds of propellant, almost 100 pounds of air, more than 925 pounds of water and 3,042 pounds of dry cargo -- a total of 5,125 pounds. NASA TV coverage of the docking will begin at 11:30 p.m. Monday

http://ftp.amsat.org/amsat/archive/sarex/48ho

Marking the second week working together, the Expedition 15 crew wrapped up a week of various maintenance tasks, science experiments and preparations for the May 15 arrival of the Progress 25 supply ship.

To prepare for the new unpiloted cargo carrier's arrival, the currently docked Progress' engines were used to reboost the station Saturday. The move increases the number of rendezvous opportunities for the STS-117 space shuttle mission targeted for next month. Expedition 15 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineers Oleg Kotov and Suni Williams also removed the docking mechanism from the Progress 24 for later use.

The Expedition 15 crew aboard the International Space Station completed its first week of station orientation as the crew worked with experiments and hardware maintenance.

Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineers Oleg Kotov and Suni Williams began the week with a couple light duty days after the busy handover operations with the former crew. Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian crewmate Mikhail Tyurin, accompanied by spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi, returned to Earth on Saturday, April 21, and are at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, for several weeks of post-mission debriefing and rehabilitation.