4 p.m. CST Friday, Nov. 14, 2003
Expedition 8 Crew
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11.14.03
| STATUS REPORT:
ISS03-59
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International Space Station Status Report #03-59
The Expedition 8 crew of the International Space Station wound up its week with a busy Friday, getting ready for next week's practice session for a possible February spacewalk. Commander and NASA ISS Science Officer Michael Foale and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri also spent considerable time on science experiments.
Crewmembers are scheduled to do fit check work with the Russian spacesuits on Monday. On Tuesday they are to practice various spacewalk procedures, including boarding the ISS Soyuz 7 at the station in pressurized spacesuits. That would become necessary if they were unable to repressurize the Pirs Docking Compartment after a spacewalk.
Today Foale spend almost two hours working with the Cellular Biotechnology Operations Support System (CBOSS) and its Fluid Dynamics Investigation (FDI) experiment. He was preparing for operations with the experiment, which focuses on growth of three-dimensional cell cultures. Meanwhile Kaleri worked with the Russian Profilaktika experiment, which looks at some long-duration spaceflight effects and how to combat them.
After a relatively quiet weekend, the crew began the week with body mass measurements moments after they were awakened. Crewmembers also stowed the EarthKAM experiment, which last week completed 750 requested Earth pictures for students in 41 middle schools. Foale and Kaleri also took time to talk with former Skylab astronauts gathered at the Marshall Space Flight Center on the 30th anniversary of the launch of the last crew to the first U.S. space station.
On Tuesday crewmembers did a periodic hearing assessment, inspected the Treadmill Vibration Isolation System (TVIS) and checked out batteries for the Station's defibrillator. Wednesday they worked to organize equipment and supplies and stowed much of the material in the Zero-G Stowage Rack in the U.S. laboratory Destiny. One object of the activity, which will continue next week, is to assure that fire ports in the Station's Unity Node are unobstructed in the unlikely event fire should break out behind the panels through which the ports provide access for fire extinguishers.
Foale responded to flight controllers' questions about the TVIS and inspected the device before exercising on the treadmill Thursday. He also replaced a battery in the Space Acceleration Measurement System. The crew changed out 10 smoke detectors.
Foale and Kaleri also continued taking potassium citrate pills or placebos and recorded their food, water and medication intake as part of the Renal (kidney) Stone Risk During Spaceflight experiment. Previous experiments in space have shown an increased risk ifor development of kidney stones during and immediately after flight, and the experiment is testing a proven Earth-based remedy in space.
Information on the crew's activities aboard the Space Station, and instructions on how to view the Space Station from anywhere on Earth, is available at:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov
Details on Space 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 International Space Station status report will be issued Friday, Nov. 21, or sooner if events warrant.
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