[sarex] EXP 14 CREW PREPS FOR DISCOVERY ARRIVAL

[Arthur Rowe]

SUBMITTED BY ARTHUR N1ORC - AMSAT A/C #31468


Crew Preps for Shuttle Launch


Expedition 14 Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineers Mikhail 
Tyurin and Thomas Reiter prepared this week for the planned arrival of 
Space Shuttle Discovery which launches next week. The crew reviewed the 
STS-116 mission plans, packed equipment to be returned to Earth, and 
prepared the station's Quest airlock, spacesuits and spacewalking tools. 
Reiter will be replaced aboard the station by astronaut Sunita Williams, 
arriving on Discovery.

An attempted reboost of the space station’s altitude was cut short 
Wednesday. The Progress cargo craft's thrusters fired for 3 minutes, 16 
seconds before being automatically shut off. Russian flight controllers 
suspect that sensitive software detected a slight shift in the 
orientation of the station as the thrusters were fired. They are 
scheduled to complete the reboost of the station on Monday.

Mission Control, Houston, has been analyzing a problem that occurred 
during testing of a new software package used for commanding the 
station's giant Solar Alpha Rotary Joint. The joint is used to rotate 
the new solar arrays to track the sun. While running through the 
software commands on Tuesday, a circuit breaker on the station opened. 
The circuit breaker was successfully reset on Thursday and ground 
controllers continued to refine the new software.


NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency have named two astronauts and 
two cosmonauts to the next International Space Station crew, known as 
Expedition 15. Astronauts Clayton Anderson and Daniel Tani will travel 
to the station next year and work as flight engineers. Cosmonauts Fyodor 
Yurchikhin and Dr. Oleg Kotov will spend six months aboard the orbiting 
laboratory.