[sarex] ISS STATUS REPORT #40

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Submitted by Arthur - N1ORC

4 p.m. CDT, Friday, Sept. 6, 2002 
Expedition Five Crew

Canadarm2 got another workout Thursday as the Expedition 5 crew aboard
the International Space Station set to work in earnest to prepare for the
arrival of the station's next major component on the STS-112 shuttle
mission. 

Beginning work on Tuesday, following the Labor Day holiday, Commander
Valery Korzun and Flight Engineers Peggy Whitson and Sergei Treschev
charged and discharged batteries used in the U.S. extravehicular mobility
unit spacesuits in preparation for three spacewalks that will originate
from the station's Quest airlock module. Whitson also did some
troubleshooting on the battery charging assembly associated with that
task. 

The entire crew participated in emergency training sessions, practicing
their assignments and responsibilities in the event of either an
emergency depressurization of a station module, or a medical emergency
affecting a crewmember. The training sessions are scheduled periodically
to make sure the crew is always prepared to react quickly and effectively
in the event of an emergency. 

Whitson resumed research in the Destiny Laboratory and its new
Microgravity Science Glovebox, conducting two runs with an experiment
studying semiconductor formation in space. That experiment,
Solidification Using a Baffle in Sealed Ampoules, uses a special furnace
to control the initial melting, fluid motion and bubbles as the crystals
form in an effort to make larger, purer semiconductor crystals. Two more
samples will be processed before Whitson reconfigures the glovebox for
the next, the Pore Formation and Mobility Invesigation, which focuses on
the bubbles that often become trapped in a metal or crystal sample and
diminish the material's strength and usefulness. 

Thursday was robotics day on the station, with Whitson and Korzun taking
turns at Canadarm2's controls both to increase their proficiency and to
continue to check out the Mobile Base System on the station's truss
structure. The pair "flew" the arm into position so that the Latching End
Effector (LEE) of the arm could look directly into the LEE of the Payload
and Orbital Replacement Unit Accommodation (POA), and vice versa. This
allowed television cameras to downlink views of the snare and latching
mechanisms for flight controllers and engineers to inspect. 

Next, they moved the arm in a survey of the Mobile Base System and its
four Power and Data Grapple Fixtures (PDGFs). Once the survey was
complete, they grappled and ungrappled the fourth and final PDGF to be
checked out. All of the major objectives of the arm operations and
grapple fixture checkout were successful. 

Maintenance was the major activity Friday, and the crew powered down
about half of Destiny's systems in order to replace a Remote Power
Control Module (RPCM) which switches power to various systems on the
station. The systems power down and replacement of the module went well,
and flight controllers were restoring power to the systems that had been
shut down as the crew began preparing for bed Friday afternoon. 

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