Category The International Space Station

Prior to launch Bursch was asked how he viewed his flight with the Expedition-4 crew. He replied, in part,

“I think early on, well, maybe after about a year of all the travelling and training, Carl and I were talking about it with Yuri and I think we all came to the realization that this mission is different. And Yuri has been very helpful and because of his experience already on Mir and the six months that he spent on Space Station, of letting us know that it is different… the best analogy that I think I can come up with, it’s kind of like the difference between a sprint and a long­distance race… With a long-duration mission I think it’s going to be more like a marathon, where we’re going to have to pace ourselves… we can’t run at the same pace that we’re used to running on the Space Shuttle, and there’ll have to be times where we’ll have to help each other out just to say, hey, it’s time for you to just take a break and sit by the window, look out, and take some time; have some time to yourself…

However, there’ll be times when a Shuttle comes to visit and we’ll have six to eight very, very busy days of getting ready for them to come, while they’re docked, helping with the EVAs, helping with installation of new equipment, and so, it’ll vary from being very slow to very fast, almost a Shuttle-like pace, and then slowing down again. And what’ll be different, also, is that the weekends, I haven’t quite figured out how that’s going to work; I know that on Saturday it will be a lighter duty, and Sunday in most respects we’ll have much of the day off, but I can’t imagine having the day off and not having anything to do … Maybe… I’ll end up saying, OK, give me things that need to be done, because… I’ve run out of personal time or, I don’t want to read a book right now, I want to do something.’’

In the same interview Bursch explained how the Expedition-4 crew viewed their

personal responsibilities,

“[J]ust as in Shuttle flights… everybody has their own position and their own responsibilities… so early on we… divided up the responsibilities of the crew. Yuri, for a Commander it’s different, in that he’s responsible for everything… he’s tended to specialize more on the Russian segment and some of the Russian systems, especially because he had the experience on Mir and a lot of the systems… are similar to Mir. Carl, with his experience on EVAs… became the… natural lead for any type of EVA activities that we would do, especially on the U. S. segment or using the U. S. spacesuit, or the EMU. Yuri’s kind of, is more of an expert on the Russian Orlan, the Russian spacesuit… I took on working with the Space Station Remote Manipulator System… And that has been my prime responsibility and my prime system. There’s also systems on the station that we divide up… keep in mind, with only a crew of three, everybody has to know a little bit about everything… however each one of us has tried to specialize in a certain part of the system to take care of that… So we kind of had a big list of all the tasks and… of all the equipment, and all the things that we need to do on space station, and we just basically divided them up.’’

While the search for debris from Columbia began on the ground, life went on onboard ISS, and NASA had to continue to operate the station despite their recent loss. At 10:59, February 1, Progress M1-9 was undocked, manoeuvred clear, and commanded to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up. The undocking cleared Zvezda’s wake for Progress M-47. Following the undocking, the Expedition-6 crew had expected to have an easy day in front of them. Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit were informed of the loss of Columbia approximately one hour after it occurred, at which point the mood onboard turned very sombre.

The following day NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe spoke on the NASA Television channel about the three men still on ISS:

“We’re focused on making sure they are fully supported and as early as we can possibly get back up there to rotate that crew and bring them back home and send a new crew, that’s exactly what we’re going to do… All three of them are apprised of the facts of what’s going on. They’ve been given all the information and they’re

prepared to do what’s necessary to stiff this out throughout the course of the investigation … We’ve got time. We’ve got an opportunity, I think, to sustain them with what they need, but we’re always focused on making sure that we recognise that people are depending on us.’’

Progress M-47 was launched from Baikonur at 07: 59, February 2, and docked at Zvezda’s wake at 09: 49 February 4. Following pressure and leak checks the hatches between the two vehicles were opened at 14: 00, but unloading did not begin until the following morning. The cargo on Progress M-47 would ensure that the crew had sufficient essential supplies to continue the occupation of ISS through the end of June and early July 2003. During the day the Expedition-6 crew paid their private tributes to the STS-107 crew and listened to an audio feed from the Memorial Service held at JSC attended by President Bush and NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe.

Following unloading of the Progress, Pettit replaced the two power cells in the MSG with two brought up by the Progress M-47. When the change-out was complete he applied power to the MSG and two circuit breakers in Destiny tripped. This was exactly what had happened when the MSG malfunctioned in November 2002. To avoid damage to the new components Pettit powered the MSG off and the investigation into why it had failed continued on the ground.

The Expedition-6 crew’s schedule had changed due to the loss of Columbia. With all Shuttle flights suspended indefinitely until the cause of the loss could be identified and corrected, the crew knew that they would have to return to Earth in a Soyuz at the end of their occupation, rather than on STS-114 in March, as originally planned. The most likely scenario was that the Expedition-7 crew would bump the Soyuz TMA-2 taxi crew due for launch in April, and the Expedition-6 crew would return to Earth in Soyuz TMA-1, with Budarin serving as Soyuz Commander. This was exactly the reason a Soyuz spacecraft was attached to ISS at all times. The Expedition-6 occupation could be extended for one month, to maintain the Soyuz TMA-2 launch schedule. Meanwhile, they were instructed to put together a full inventory of all supplies onboard, while flight controllers in Houston and Korolev carefully monitored and recorded everything that the crew used. Put together, the two audits would allow mission planners to ensure that future Progress flights were loaded with essential supplies to maintain the mission.

On February 10, it was announced that the rocket motors on Progress M-47 would be used to raise the station’s orbit in advance of the Soyuz TMA-2 launch. The first of three re-boosts took place at 06: 34 the following day. At the same time it was announced that NASA had requested the Russians to provide an additional Progress for 2003. Following a Russian request, it was announced on February 12 that, until the Shuttle began flying again, all future Expedition crews would consist of one American astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut. All crew deliveries and returns would be made using Soyuz TMA spacecraft, with the two-man Expedition-7 crew flying to ISS in Soyuz TMA-2 no earlier than April 26, 2003. Following the usual hand-over in orbit the Expedition-6 crew would return to Earth in Soyuz TMA-1.

At the time of the reduction to two crew members the schedule for the next four Expedition crews had been

“The International Space Station is doing very well. My last conversation with Captain Bowersox was, ‘Don’t worry about us. You know where to find us, and we’re not going anywhere; everything’s fine.’ So they’re in good spirits and moving along.’’

During the same day the Expedition-6 crew spoke of how they had learnt of the loss of STS-107. Bowersox explained:

‘‘We were scheduled for a normal planning meeting on Saturday [February 1]. General Howell, the Director of the Johnson Space Centre, came in and told us we lost the vehicle on entry. My first reaction was sheer shock, I was numb and it was hard to believe that what we were experiencing was really happening. Then, as the reality wore on, we were able to feel some sadness. It’s the classic grieving responses our psychologists had warned us about, you feel sad, you feel angry, all those things. And now, as time goes on, we’re able to put those aside and focus a lot better on our work… The folks on the ground have been real good about reducing our schedule and we’ve had some time to grieve our friends; and that was very important. When you’re up here this long, you can’t just bottle up your emotions and focus all the time…

It’s important for us to acknowledge that the people on STS-107 were our friends, that we had a connection with them and that we feel their loss. Each of us had a chance to shed some tears. But now, it’s time to move forward and we’re doing that, slowly… At the conclusion of the memorial service, after the bells had rung on the ground and the T-38s had flown by and it was very quiet onboard, we rang our ship bell seven times. At that point it was very, very quiet on board the International Space Station. We spent 15-20 minutes in silence and then we moved on. We had work to do. We had to unload our Progress. At that point, we started thinking about good things, we pulled out the fresh fruit, the oranges, the mail we got from home and it gave us quite a lift after the memorial service.

We are enjoying our mission up here, we enjoy the environment of the Space Station and we’re going to enjoy the next two and a half, three months here. So the extra stay is not something that we consider negative. In fact, for us it is positive. We actually volunteered to stay longer. We told our management if they need us to stay a year that’s fine, they’ve got blanket approval for that. If they want us to stay longer than a year, please give us a couple of months notice. So we like living on Space Station, and we feel comfortable that we have a way home, we have complete confidence in our Soyuz vehicle and the ability of our Russian partners to operate that vehicle and get us home safely. Because it’s been a few months since we’ve been in a simulator, we’ll do additional training here on board if it should be required for us to come home in the Soyuz.’’

Pettit remarked that he felt that grieving was a very personal thing and he felt comfortable grieving in the privacy and quiet offered by the various individual modules of ISS. He said that a two-man crew would be

“real busy just maintaining the systems on the station… However, there would be time to do some level of research and by virtue of having people here, you’re always doing research on your body itself, looking at the effects of long duration weightlessness on human physiology. So it’s important to keep people on station.’’

By February 13, NASA was able to announce that DNA testing had positively identified the remains of all seven STS-107 astronauts and all searches for additional human remains had been halted. Ramon’s remains had been returned to Israel earlier in the week and preparations were underway for the other astronauts’ remains to be handed over to their families for private burial arrangements.

The following day, Bowersox and Pettit operated the SSRMS, to perform routine checkout procedures and maintain their proficiency in using the system. Other maintenance during the week included removing and cleaning several of the fans responsible for driving the airflow throughout the station. Pettit continued to support the ground-based work on the continuing MSG malfunction investigation.

On February 24, Rosaviakosmos named two caretaker crews.

Although no announcement was made at the time, it seemed likely that McArthur and Tokarev would fly Soyuz TMA-4 to ISS and serve as the third caretaker crew if the Shuttle was not flying again by the end of the TMA-3 tour. It was also announced that the Spanish ESA astronaut Pedro Duque, who had originally been scheduled to fly on Soyuz TMA-2, would now fly on Soyuz TMA – 3 under commercial contract with the Russians. He would return to Earth with the Expedition-7 Crew.

The first three-person Expedition crew to occupy ISS when the Shuttle returned to flight was named at the same time. They were Krikalov, Volkov, and Phillips. All other crews that were in place when Columbia was lost were disbanded.

As November drew to a close, Congress approved NASA’s budget request for FY2005. The final figure allocated was only $44 million short of that requested by President Bush when he announced the new Vision for Space Exploration. $4.3 billion was allocated to the Shuttle, but NASA was mandated to report back to Congress on a regular basis regarding the cost of returning the Shuttle to flight. The budget also included money to begin development of the CEV, which would replace the Shuttle.

SOYUZ TMA-5 RELOCATED

On November 24, Sharipov test-fired the thrusters on Soyuz TMA-5 in anticipation of its relocation to Zarya. During the test, controllers in Korolev noticed the same reduction in pressure in the fuel system that had been observed during the initial approach to the station. As the thruster problem had no effect on the future use of Soyuz TMA-5 it was decided to carry on with the relocation manoeuvre and a second test-firing of the thrusters during that manoeuvre was cancelled. Two days later, the crew reviewed the plans for the relocation manoeuvre and closed the hatches between Progress M-50 and Zarya. November 25 was the American Thanksgiving Day holiday and the Expidition-10 crew had a day off.

Having configured ISS for automatic operation, both astronauts sealed them­selves in the descent module of Soyuz TMA-5 on November 29. Sharipov undocked the Soyuz from Pirs at 04: 29, and backed away to a distance of 30 metres. He then flew the spacecraft 14 metres along the length of the station before rotating it through 135° and held it in position for 8 minutes of station keeping. Docking with Zarya’s nadir port took place at 05: 53. Following the standard leak and pressure checks the crew opened the hatches between the two vehicles, returned to ISS, and reconfigured it for occupied operation. The crew had November 30 and December 1 off. On November 30 the missing metal shim from the EMU pump drifted past Chiao, who was working inside Pirs. He recovered it, but pressure suit engineers decided not to use it, preferring to use a new shim, to be delivered on the next Progress. During the month the crew had carried out three audits of the food onboard, which showed that the previous Expedition crew had eaten into the current crew’s rations. New supplies would be launched on Progress M-51, but if the launch failed, or the spacecraft failed to dock, the food currently on ISS would run out in mid-January, requiring the crew to evacuate the station. As the food ran out the crew reduced the amount they were eating, until Sharipov told an interviewer, “We are short of food. We are eating less than half of our normal rations…’’

Returning to work on December 2, they swapped out the filter cartridges in the Elektron oxygen generator. The crew spent the next 3 weeks filling Progress M-50 with rubbish to be taken away when it undocked, on December 22. A laptop com­puter failed in Zvezda, and was replaced by one from Sharipov’s sleep station. Three new laptops would be in Progress M-51, to bring the Station Support Computer network back up to full capability.

The second week in December was spent preparing Destiny for additional experiment racks. Chiao worked with the ARIS experiment. He also photographed the BCAT experiment and worked with the in-space soldering experiment. Meanwhile, Sharipov donned the Chibis suit, which simulated forces on the musculo-skeletal system using suction as part of a study of the cardiovascular system. The crew also completed a range of housekeeping duties.

Sharipov and Chiao carried out a routine practice with the SSRMS and left it with both ends holding grapple fixtures on the exterior of the station. It was a precautionary measure, in case the food shortage, coupled with a failure of the Progress M-51 flight, led to the evacuation of ISS, during the week ending December 17. They installed cables and a switching unit for the docking system that would guide the European ATV to docking with Zvezda’s wake. The week was a busy one, with experiment periods using the ADUM. The crew also carried out an inventory of all items loaded into Progress M-50. At one point, the Elektron oxygen generator was deliberately turned off, to allow the last of the oxygen in Progress M-51’s tanks to be used. They also carried out maintenance on the ventilation system in Zvezda and replaced the batteries in the station’s heart defibrillator. A major task during the week was a top-to-bottom inventory of every item held in the Quest airlock. This was carried out in advance of three EVAs planned from Quest during the STS-114 Return to Flight mission. With their loading tasks complete, the crew closed the hatches between Progress M-50 and Zvezda. The Progress undocked at 14: 37, December 22, and backed away from Zvezda’s wake. A separation manoeuvre placed it in its own orbit before it was de-orbited to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

On December 13, Sean O’Keefe announced his retirement as NASA Adminis­trator. He would remain in place until a replacement was named. The new Administrator would face the following tasks relating to human spaceflight:

• Return the Shuttle to flight.

• Complete ISS before the Shuttle was retired in 2010.

• Re-structure NASA to bring the Shuttle programme to an end.

• Downsize NASA as the Shuttle programme wound down.

• Develop Project Constellation.

• Define Project Constellation hardware.

• Restructure the NASA field stations for Project Constellation.

Creating the International Space Station, written by David Harland and John Catch – pole, was published by Springer-Praxis in 2002 (ISBN 1-85233-202-6). It described the American and Soviet/Russian national space station programmes, as well as the long, convoluted history of the International Space Station (ISS), from its conception through to the safe recovery of the Expedition-3 crew in December 2001.

The International Space Station: Building for the Future continues the coverage of the construction and occupation of ISS, but first there is a brief resume of the hardware that is already in orbit. These early flights and the politics of constructing ISS during this period are covered in full in the original volume, which ended with the delivery of the Expedition-4 crew to ISS onboard the STS-108 Shuttle flight.

The original flight coverage in this new volume returns to the launch of STS-108, and the beginning of the Expedition-4 crew’s occupation of ISS. It ends with a review of how the modules developed by the European and Japanese partners will be added to the station, enhancing its research capability, and, finally, there is a brief look at the early designs for the Orion spacecraft and its Ares-1 launch vehicle. Plans for Project Constellation to carry humans back to the Moon and on to Mars are not covered as they have no bearing on the ISS programme as presently defined.

Appendices include a Flight Log and an Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Log for the period covered in this volume. Both of these logs continue from those included in the original volume. There is also a List of abbreviations and descriptions of the major ISS hardware.

As this volume begins, all was well with the station, with the exception of the Russian budget. Although many scientists were sceptical about the quantity and quality of science being performed on the station, at least science was being per­formed daily. Russian experience on their Salyut and Mir space stations had sug­gested that on average 2.5 crew members were required simply to keep up with the

ever-present requirement to maintain the station’s systems, while the third crew member spent part of their time performing scientific experiments. While Russia struggled even to fund the contracted number of Soyuz and Progress vehicles, America prepared to move forward with the construction of the Integrated Truss Structure (ITS), the huge cross beam that would house the station’s eight Solar Array Wings (SAWs), associated storage batteries, and cooling radiators. Construction of the ITS would allow the station’s primary power and cooling systems to be config­ured and take over from the temporary systems put in place when the Port-6 ITS was temporarily located on the Z-l truss. The ITS also had to be at least partially constructed, with its power and cooling systems functional, before Node-2 could be launched and docked in place to serve as a mount for the European and Japanese modules. Following the cancellation of the American Habitation Module, the European Space Agency had been paid to provide additional living quarters inside Node-3, which would now be the final pressurised module delivered to ISS, some time in 2008. This would allow the Expedition crew to be expanded to six people.

It was not to be.

The tragic loss of STS-107, Columbia, on February l, 2003, grounded the Space Shuttle fleet and threw the ISS construction schedule in the rubbish bin. Plans to have the station fully constructed by 2008, and maximise its potential through permanent occupation until 2016 were no longer realistic. The period that followed the loss of Columbia stretched the goodwill of the partners involved in the ISS programme to the full.

Ever short of money, the Russians claimed that they could not afford to produce the extra Soyuz and Progress spacecraft required to keep ISS occupied. They sug­gested that it be abandoned until Shuttle flights were resumed. NASA stated that they would only abandon the station as a last resort. Russia was therefore forced to find the additional funding, and permanent occupation continued, with two-man “care­taker crews’’ flying to and from ISS in Russian Soyuz spacecraft and being re­supplied by Russian Progress cargo ships. Despite major differences of opinion on Earth over the American-led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, the Russians con­tinued to work amicably with the Americans on ISS.

When the Columbia Accident Investigation was over, and the Shuttle was pre­paring to Return to Flight, the Russians felt that they had paid the debt incurred when their first module, Zvezda, was only fitted out with American financial assis­tance and then launched two years late. They insisted on the return of the ISS experiment time that the Americans had negotiated away from them at that time. The relationship between the two major partners had changed significantly.

Dedicated to the memory of the crew of Soyuz-n

Georgi Dobrovolsky Vladislav Volkov Viktor Patsayev

They were called forward at short notice to occupy the world’s first space
station, Salyut-i, and perished during their return to Earth

“It’ll basically be, wake up, get ready to go have some breakfast, read the morning mail, and have some time together, to talk about the upcoming day, what do we have planned for the day. So regular things like that, whether it’s personal hygiene or reading or getting up-to-date is going to be somewhat normal. And then there’ll be some weeks that I think the pace will definitely change.. .the pace will probably be toughest… when the Shuttle is docked, and we’re doing operations together

and involving many different systems. Certainly the pace will be much slower… if the Shuttle isn’t there… So the pace is probably going to be all over the place.”

Onufreinko, Walz, and Bursch settled into their own routines in the third week of December. They activated science experiments and unloaded Progress Ml-7 as well as the equipment carried to ISS on STS-108. The Expedition’s cellular experiments, begun on December 15, were completed after 12 days. On December 19, the crew noticed that despite the installation offered by its insulation blankets the electric motor driving the Beta Gimbal Assembly (BGA) that rotated the Port-6 SAW had experienced a strain and stalled. The motor was restarted and continued to run normally. Engineers at Houston continued to monitor both the Alpha and Beta drive motors.

The crew took a rest day on December 25, and January 1, 2002 to celebrate Christmas and New Year. Although they had to complete their daily exercise regime, they also took time to relax and to talk to their families and friends. On the subject of holidays, Bursch would write,

“The holidays were a nice break from the rapid pace of a Shuttle mission. I kept thinking about what several experienced Expedition crew members had told me; the Shuttle mission is a sprint, and the Station mission is a marathon. Of course, being away from family during the holidays is always tough. It was very hard for me to be away from my family, but I couldn’t help but think of all of the service men and women that were away from their families as well. And I also couldn’t help but think about the tens of thousands of people that were missing friends and family over the holidays because of the terrorist acts of September 11th. And for them there would be no future reunion. I suddenly felt very fortunate to have a healthy family on Earth, knowing that they were sharing the holidays with loved ones.’’

With the holiday period over, the crew returned to their experiments. Both the Active Rack Isolation System ISS Characterisation Experiment (ARIS-ICE) and the Experiment on Physics of Colloids in Space (EXPPCS) were halted on December 21, and resumed on January 2. The Payload Operation Centre (POC) in Huntsville sent commands to activate the experiments and monitored them as the crew went about their daily tasks. All three men completed their Crew Interaction Questionnaires on December 26-27.

Walz and Bursch both participated in the H-Reflex and the Pulmonary Function Facility (PuFF) experiments. The first experiment studied the spinal cord’s adapta­tion to microgravity. The second studied the effects of spaceflight on lung function. The same pair of astronauts had the opportunity to practise operating the SSRMS on January 3. In moving the SSRMS from one location to another on the exterior of ISS, Walz and Bursch allowed controllers in Houston to record the strains experienced when the arm separated from the fixture holding it to the station. Walz described the crew’s daily participation in the station’s numerous experiments in the following terms:

“We’re like a lab technician: we’ll be performing media exchanges for samples, we’ll be checking to ensure that the samples are growing as planned, we’ll report to the ground if there’re any anomalies, we have status checks to perform every day. So, it’s just, once we get things started, to make sure everything progresses per the timeline, and then at the end to make sure that we terminate the experi­ment properly so that when we bring the samples home, the scientists will be able to make the proper evaluations.”

On January 7, the EXPPCS began a 120-hour run, the longest yet. On the same date the ARIS-ICE science team began a series of one-minute isolation tests of their equipment using new control software. The crew also checked the individual radiation badges and the monitoring equipment connected with the Extravehicular Activity Radiation Monitoring experiment (EVARM). The radiation badges would be placed inside the cooling garments of pressure suits during future EVAs to monitor radiation reaching the wearer’s skin, eyes, and internal organs. Their first use would be on the STS-110 Shuttle flight when it visited ISS later in the year. Walz and Bursch completed the first session of the Renal Stone Experiment, a study of the risk of astronauts developing kidney stones during long-duration flights. Over one 24-hour period the two men monitored their diet and collected samples for return to Earth each time they urinated. They also had to keep logbooks throughout the period of the experiment.

Also on January 7, Bursch removed the hard drive from the Command & Control-2 (C&C-2) computer and replaced it with a new solid-state mass memory card, with three times the memory of the old drive. The computer was located in Avionics Rack-3 in Destiny, from where it processed all commands from Huntsville to the experiments and the flow of telemetry from the experiments back to Huntsville. The new memory card had been delivered to ISS on STS-108.

During the week the crew began preparations for their first EVA, which Walz described in his pre-flight interview published on the NASA Human Spaceflight website,

“Well, the spacewalk that Yuri and I will do is to move the first Strela cargo boom, which came up during the 2A.2a flight, and we’re going to move that from the PMA to the Docking Compartment. And so, we will use the Strela that comes up in the Docking Compartment to drive us over from the Docking Compartment to the PMA, sort of lash the second Strela on, and then bring it over. So it should be a very visually interesting EVA because I’ll be hanging at the end of the Strela … being transferred in free space, with this other large structure. So I think it’s going to be very exciting.’’

That EVA began at 15:59 January 14, when Onufrienko and Walz left Pirs wearing Russian Orlan pressure suits. They assembled and installed an extension to the Strela-1 crane mounted on the exterior of Pirs. Their main task was use the Strela-1 crane to position themselves so that they could detach and reposition the Strela-2 crane from PMA-1 to the base plate on the opposite side of the exterior of Pirs to the Strela-1 crane. Strela-2 was relocated at 19: 31. With the relocation com­plete the two cranes would be able to work in tandem during future EVAs and construction of ISS. The two men also deployed an amateur radio antenna on an EVA handrail at the end of Zarya. They returned to Pirs and prepressurised the airlock at 22: 02, after an EVA lasting 6 hours 3 minutes. Immediately after the EVA all three crewmen completed a turn on the PuFF experiment, to study the evenness of gas exchange in their lungs.

On the ground the Active Rack Isolation System (ARIS) control team in Hunts­ville down-linked data from their experiment and sent new software commands to their equipment in order to maintain good housekeeping on the data storage disk. The EXPPCS completed the 120-hour run begun on January 7. The experiment then began a new 24-hour run, on January 21. This was the last run before a new set of fractal gel tests that would last approximately five weeks and would prevent the crew from examining other samples held within the experiment. All three men completed their Crew Interactions Questionnaire and received new Crew Earth Observations targets, which they would photograph if the opportunity arose.

During the week following the EVA, Walz worked with controllers on the ground to remove the hard drive from the C&C-1 computer and replace it with a solid-state mass memory unit. The task took over four hours, but C&C-1 was brought on-line as the ISS back-up computer on January 23. Meanwhile, Onufrienko and Bursch replenished the two Orlan EVA suits worn on January 14, and prepared the equipment that they would install on the exterior of ISS during their second EVA. Of the 25 experiments planned for Expedition-4, 15 were in progress at this time. During his sleep period on January 24, Bursch was disturbed by a noise. Investigation revealed that one of the push-rods on the ARIS-ICE experiment was broken.

Onufrienko and Bursch began the Expedition’s second EVA at 09: 19, January 25, when they left Pirs dressed in Orlan pressure suits to mount deflectors behind six of Zvezda’s manoeuvring thrusters. They also recovered the Kroma-1-0 experiment package, which had been collecting samples of the thruster effluent deposited on the side of Zvezda when the thrusters fired. They then installed the fresh Kroma-1 collector package in its place. A second ham radio antenna was placed on the exterior of Zvezda along with the Plantan-M package, which was an experiment designed to detect neutral low-energy nuclei both from the Sun and from outside the Solar System. They also installed three materials exposure experiments on the exterior of Zvezda. Finally, they installed fairleads on Zvezda’s EVA handrails, guides to prevent an EVA astronaut’s safety tether from fouling equipment mounted on the exterior of the module. The EVA ended at 15: 18, after 5 hours 59 minutes. On January 26, Onufrienko and Bursch completed their post-EVA PuFF experiments.

January ended with a quiet week during which the crew changed the hard drive in the C&C-3 computer for a solid-state mass memory unit. The crew tested the station’s communication systems in an attempt to eradicate an echo that was degrading audio communications. The KURS rendezvous equipment was removed from Progress M1-7 for return to Earth, where it would be refurbished and reused. They also installed a laptop computer in the Quest airlock. On January 29, they withdrew the EVARM radiation badges from the pockets of their liquid-cooled EVA under­garments and recorded the dosages for transmission to the ground. Bursch also logged his dietary data as part of the Renal Stone Experiment. The broken push – rod on the ARIS-ICE experiment was removed and replaced on January 30.

At 08: 00, February 4, the Expedition-4 crew’s 60th day in space, the main computer in Zvezda crashed, disrupting the station’s attitude control. The crew began powering down back-up systems and all experiments in case of a decrease in electrical power caused by the station’s SAWs losing their lock on the sun. Controllers in Houston and Korolev worked together to restart the computer, which was achieved at 10: 30. One hour later the station’s attitude control system was back on line. Power was restored to sensitive experiments within 6 hours and everything was back to normal 24 hours after the computer crash. EXPRESS Rack 4, in Destiny, was the first to be powered on, as it held the Bio-technology Refrigerator and the PCG-STES which both contained biological samples. The MAMS had undergone a period of maintenance prior to the computer crash and was powered on the day after the crash. EXPRESS Racks 1 and 2, and the Space Acceleration Measurement System (SAMS) experiment were powered on during February 5, and the crew began preparations for a 72-hour run of the EXPPCS. EarthKAM was re-instated in Zvezda’s window, one week early. The experiment allowed Middle School children to command cameras on ISS to expose photographs of Earth’s surface. NASA subsequently published the photographs on the Internet. Additional schools, including one in Germany, had joined the experiment since it was shut down by the Expedition-3 crew in anticipation

of the school holiday period. Fifty images had been downloaded since the cameras were reinstalled following the school holiday. Activities related to the Education Payload Operation-4 (EPO), which included the crew setting up and video taping a series of simple experiments, was rescheduled from February 4-5.

Onufrienko celebrated his 41st birthday on February 6. Two days later, the crew began to take an inventory of the equipment and food onboard to help planners work towards re-stocking ISS for the Expedition-5 crew. On February 13, they began a Human Research Facility (HRF) workstation test. The following day they carried out testing of the ultrasound life science equipment. The day after that they were familiarising themselves with the Zeolite Crystal Growth furnace before commencing that experiment programme. They also activated one of the cylinders in the PCG-STES Unit 7, which would be used to grow mustard seeds harvested on ISS by the Expedition-2 crew and the Advanced Culture (ADVASC) plant growth experiment.

On the same day a Remote Power Conversion Module (RPCM) failed. The RPCM distributed electricity to the station’s systems. The crew worked with engineers in Houston to repair the RPCM over the next few days. Bursch and Walz replaced a circuit breaker box using a spare held on ISS and thereby restored power to the non-essential equipment in Destiny. The repair required Bursch’s sleep station in the laboratory module to be removed. Before it was re-established they took the opportunity to install additional high-density radiation protection bricks behind it.

On February 15, the EXPPCS began a 120-hour run. A planned update of the station’s computer software, to prepare the computer system for the installation of the Starboard-0 (S-0) ITS during the flight of STS-110, in April 2002, was delayed until after the EVA planned for February 20.

That EVA began at 06:38, when Walz and Bursch made the first egress from Quest without a Shuttle docked to the station. Both men employed a new combina­tion of pure oxygen and exercise to purge the nitrogen from their bloodstream. They wore American EMUs and for the first time the Intravehicular Officer, responsible for supporting the EVA astronauts, Joe Tanner, himself an astronaut, was based in the control room at Houston, rather than in orbit. Throughout the EVA Onufrienko used the video cameras on the SSRMS to view his colleagues’ activities. The Amer­icans designated this Stage EVA, “US EVA-1’’. The two astronauts removed two power cables from their stowage area on the exterior of Destiny and plugged them in to a cable near the base of the Z-1 Truss. Plans to disconnect the cables and return them to storage at the end of the test were cancelled when plugging them in caused unpredicted power readings in the current conversion unit in the circuit that they completed. Working separately, Walz removed four thermal blankets from the Z-1 Truss and stowed them within the truss, while Bursch retrieved tools that would be used during the four EVAs planned during STS-110 and carried them to the Quest airlock. They then joined together to secure the locks holding oxygen tanks to the exterior of Quest that were looser than required following their original installation. They removed two adapters that had been used to hold the Russian Strela cranes on the exterior of the station. One was relocated to the exterior of Zarya, while the other was placed inside the Quest airlock. Finally, they inspected external cable connectors and the Materials on International Space Station Experiment (MISSE), where they found that some of the exposure samples had peeled back from their mounts. Walz and Bursch returned to Quest at the end of their planned activities. The hatch was closed and the EVA ended at 12: 25, after 5 hours 47 minutes. Throughout the EVA the MAMS and SAMS equipment recorded the vibrations associated with the external activities. Both EVA astronauts participated in PuFF and EVARM experiments prior to, during, and following their activities.

They were two hours late going to bed at the end of the day. The delay was caused when an unpleasant odour began emanating from the equipment used to clean the air scrubbers in the EMUs that they had used during their EVA. On instruction from Houston the equipment was powered off and the Quest airlock internal hatch was closed to prevent the odour prevailing further into the station. Some of the station’s ventilation fans were powered off, while the system used to scrub the station’s air was powered on in Destiny. All three men slept in Zvezda that night. On February 21, controllers at Korolev used the rocket motors in the Progress M1-7 spacecraft docked to ISS to raise the station’s orbit.

The crew completed their first activities as part of the Education Payload 4 experiment on February 25. During the activities they used a series of small toys to demonstrate basic principles of physics and the microgravity environment. Three days later they activated Cylinder 8 of the PCG-STES experiment. In Destiny, EXPRESS Racks 1, 2, and 4 continued to function normally.

At the beginning of March, STS-109 was launched on a solo flight to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. On ISS the crew spent the first week of the month repairing a shock absorber in the ARIS-ICE and then bringing the experiment back on-line. They also recovered air and water samples from the ADVASC experiment. The samples would be stored before being returned to Earth for study.

Earthkam’s cameras were once again made available to schoolchildren. To prepare the Earthkam experiment the astronauts needed to move the SSRMS, which was partially blocking the window in Destiny through which the cameras exposed their images. The primary avionics system failed to release the brakes on the SSRMS, requiring the crew to use the secondary avionics system in order to complete the move. An investigation into the failure began immediately on the ground in Houston. On March 7 the crew began a training run, putting the SSRMS through the series of manoeuvres that it would be required to perform when STS-110 delivered the S-0 Truss in April. During the same day, software tests were sent up to the primary and secondary computer workstations used to control the SSRMS, but the secondary station failed to boot up. When that happened the SSRMS was left parked in a safe position while another investigation began, to identify why the boot-up had failed. During the following week the SSRMS was used to carry out a video review of the station’s radiators and SAWs. The secondary software was used to drive the arm. Also at that time, the crew completed an inventory of items on ISS, stowing equip­ment and preparing items for return to Earth in advance of STS-110’s visit, when there would be a total of ten people living and working on the station. On March 19, the rubbish-filled Progress M1-7 was sealed and manoeuvred away from Zvezda’s wake, at 12:43. It re-entered the atmosphere and burned up a few hours later, after releasing the short-lived Kolibiri-2000 sub-satellite into orbit.

The third week in February saw the crew sample their potable water and disinfect parts of the water supply system in the Russian sector of ISS in order to ensure its continued functioning to the highest standard. Pettit replaced the remote power control module in Destiny due to a bad power switch in the unit causing a video recorder to power off unexpectedly. The crew also completed regular maintenance of some of their fitness equipment in Destiny. They conducted an inventory of all articles in Quest. At the same time, new software was loaded into the Command and Control (C&C) computers, and the Guidance, Navigation, and Computers (GNC) on the station.

On February 24, Bowersox and Pettit donned American EMUs without assis­tance from Budarin. This was a test in advance of launching two-man Expedition crews to continue station occupation while the Shuttle remained grounded. The two men went as far as setting up the equipment for pre-breathing oxygen before dis­continuing the experiment and removing the suits. In Houston, Carl Walz told them “Bravo, great job.” He joked with Pettit, “We think you are losing too much weight. You make it look altogether too easy.” Three days later, O’Keefe told Congress that if at any time the crew of ISS were at serious risk then they would “dim the lights, get into the Soyuz and head for home.’’

As March began the Expedition-6 crew celebrated their 100th day in space. All three men were continuing to perform human life sciences experiments, Earth obser­vations, and other onboard scientific experiments. Pettit continued to work on repairing the MSG, working with engineers on the ground. This work appeared to be complete by the end of the month when Pettit applied electrical power to the unit and ran a test run of the Pore Formation and Mobility Investigation (PFMI), which had been in the glovebox since it failed in November 2002. Following the test, the PFMI was replaced by another experiment: Investigating the Structure of Paramagnetic Aggregates from Colloidal Emulsions (InSPACE). The crew also continued to prepare for a Stage EVA that was planned for April.

Pettit had put the human life science experiments in their historic context during his pre-launch interview:

“When you do research associated with exploration, you’re in a unique environ­ment and you learn new things about people and new things about nature. And these in themselves enrich the knowledge for everybody that doesn’t go on the exploration trip. One example I like about human physiology in exploration is transoceanic exploration in the 14th and 15th century and the role of diet and vitamin deficiencies. And, it was this kind of exploration that helped open the can of worms leading to things like vitamin C and its role in scurvy, and this information was prised, so to speak, from the souls of the early explorers. And once you learn this information, then it helps and benefits everybody back on the continent that didn’t get a chance to go on these trips. And I see this as the goal of the life science research on Space Station.’’

In his own interview, Budarin had discussed the experiments in the Russian segment of ISS:

“[The] Russian segment will have its own share of science and medical experi­ments. We will be performing Earth monitoring and observation for [the] Russian scientific program. One of the experiments is called Diatomeya. It involves observation of ocean surface in order to determine… regions that are best suitable for fishing; fertile regions of the ocean. Currently, these particular regions of the ocean are well-studied and their location is known, but in nature, every­thing changes, everything morphs, and these regions are changing as well. So we’ll be determining the new characteristics of the regions. Also, we will be monitoring the glaciers. Everybody’s talking about global warming, so we will be watching out for glacier dynamics. Medical, well, the goals and objectives are similar across all programs. The equipment may be different, but we will be working towards the same end pretty much.’’

The third week of March began with Pettit installing a new Pump Package Assembly (PPA) in the Moderate Temperature Cooling Loop (MTCL) of Destiny’s Thermal Control System. The original pump had failed the previous day. Due to seating problems in one of the valves the system was not returned to operation until March 20. Meanwhile, Budarin upgraded the Russian computer software.

When the Russian computer system was re-booted on March 19, a Russian Terminal Computer in Zvezda was unable to communicate with the American GNC Computer 2, which was controlling the station at the time. This caused a failure of the routine hand-over of control to the Russian computer. As a result, the American computer began an automatic shutdown of non-critical systems. But attitude control was not lost and, after the communication problem between the two computers had been overcome, all systems were brought back on-line within a few hours.

The last week of March was filled with three primary activities. Work to return the MSG to operational status was finally completed and preparations were made for the first run of InSPACE experiments, which were completed during the first week of April. The crew also began reviewing plans and preparing equipment for their second Stage EVA. Success would reduce the likelihood of the two-man Expedition-7 crew having to make a Stage EVA during their occupation of ISS. Finally, the Expedition-6 crew began computer-based training for their return to Earth in Soyuz TMA-1.

On March 29, representatives from America, Russia, and Europe met to discuss the financing of the two additional Progress vehicles requested for flight in 2004. Russia had hoped that America or Europe might find emergency funds to pay for the two vehicles, but it was not to be. The Americans reminded the Russians that the contract which they had signed when they became an ISS partner committed them to building and launching two Soyuz and five Progress vehicles each year, a target that they had only met in 2001. In 2002, the Russians had quoted financial difficulties as the reason for cutting the number of Progress vehicles to two each year. In March 2003, NASA now demanded that the Russians meet the terms of their original contract and supply the five Progress vehicles required in 2004. In the aftermath of STS-107 no one asked why America continually held the Russians to the letter of their contract and yet they had unilaterally ignored their own legal requirements under the same contract. In related negotiations, Russia offered an Expedition crew position to an ESA astronaut if the Europeans would finance the two additional Progress vehicles. Having failed to extract additional money from their ISS partners, Russian officials were quoted in the press as saying that Russia could not afford to finance the continued crewing of ISS on their own. Once again they suggested that the station may have to be abandoned and mothballed until the Shuttle was flying once more.

On April 4, 2003, Progress M-47 was used to raise the station’s orbit for the second time. The new orbit optimised the conditions for the docking for Soyuz TMA-2. Two days later, the SSRMS was positioned so that its lights could provide support for the up-coming Stage EVA.

At 08: 40, April 8, Bowersox and Pettit commenced their second EVA, exiting the station through the Quest airlock. After preparing their tools, the two men began work on separate lists of tasks. Bowersox reconfigured electrical connectors between the S-0 and P-1 ITS. The work put in place additional protection to prevent the unintentional separation of the entire truss structure from the S-0 through the Bolt Bus Controller System: they didn’t want a malfunctioning circuit to withdraw the bolts that held the segments together. Bowersox also inspected a faulty heater cable on the P-1 ITS Nitrogen Tank Assembly, but found nothing obviously wrong. Meanwhile, Pettit replaced a power relay box in one of the CETA carts. The cart had suffered from electrical problems since it had been installed.

Both men then moved to the Z-1 Truss and re-routed power cables to CMG-2 and CMG-3 at that location. The changes would prevent the two CMGs being disabled if they suffered a power failure. Next, they installed two SPDs on the fluid quick-disconnect lines for Destiny’s heat exchanger. Moving on to the S-1 ITS, they worked together to secure a thermal cover on the Radiator Beam Valve Module, which controlled the flow of ammonia to the S-1 radiators. Returning to the CETA carts, Pettit used a hammer to free a stanchion from its stored position and deployed it on the cart, before deploying a light on the stanchion. The two men then stowed

their equipment and returned to Quest, bringing the EVA to a close at 15:06, after 6 hours 26 minutes.

On April 11, Progress M-47 was used to complete the third of three re-boost manoeuvres in preparation for the arrival of Soyuz TMA-2. Three days later the three men donned their Sokol pressure suits and climbed into Soyuz TMA-1. The short exercise was part of their preparations for return to Earth. As the week advanced the crew began packing personal items and answering questions from controllers about onboard maintenance.

Soyuz TMA-2 was rolled out and erected on the launch pad at Baikonur on April 24. Everyone was at pains to point out to the media exactly what the flight represented. Sergei Gorbunov said, “Obviously, this mission is very important in terms of the survival of the International Space Station.”

Meanwhile, a NASA spokesman insisted, “I think everybody that has been sceptical about the strength of the Russian space program and in a broad sense about the viability and status of the Russian space program—those sceptics have been proven wrong.”

SOYUZ TMA-2 DELIVERS EXPEDITION-7, THE FIRST “CARETAKER CREW”

Prior to the loss of STS-107, Soyuz TMA-2 was just another “taxi” flight to replace Soyuz TMA-1, due for launch in April 2003. That changed when the decision was taken to keep ISS occupied by having two-man Expedition crews fly to and from the station in the available Soyuz TMA spacecraft. The crew for this flight were originally members of a three-man Expedition-7 crew with Sergei Moschenko as the third member. They should have been launched on STS-114 with the following Shuttle crew:

COMMANDER: Eileen Collins

PILOT: James Kelly

MISSION SPECIALIST: Soichi Noguchi (Japan), Stephen Robinson

Soyuz TMA-2 was launched at 23: 54, April 25, 2003. In Washington, Sean O’Keefe told journalists, “The real testimonial to how strong that partnership is, is tonight’s launch of the Soyuz.’’ At the same time O’Keefe announced the names of the Shuttle crew that would fly the “Return to Flight’’ mission, possibly in December 2003. That launch date would be pushed back to March 2004, and even then it would not be met. The Shuttle crew would deliver a fully loaded MPLM to ISS as well as the

first three-person Expedition crew since the Expedition-6 crew. The Shuttle would be flown by Eileen Collins’ crew (named above).

Following a two-day rendezvous Soyuz TMA-2 docked Zarya’s nadir at 01:56, April 28. As the Soyuz approached the station Budarin performed a pitch-up manoeuvre to allow the ISS crew to photograph his spacecraft. The photographs would be studied in America, where plans were under consideration to have all future Shuttle orbiters perform a similar manoeuvre before docking to the station. The photographs taken on those occasions would be sent down to the ground, where experts would review the Shuttle before declaring it safe for re-entry.

The hatches between the two vehicles were opened at 02: 27 and the Expedition-7 crew made their way into ISS where the Expedition-6 crew greeted them. Following their official welcome and the standard safety brief the two crews began a five-day hand-over period.

In a press conference held on April 28, Bowersox joked, “I feel a little bit like I’m being kicked out of my apartment for not paying my rent. But when I get back to Earth, the best part is going to be, to be able to hug my wife and hug my kids.’’ At one point Bowersox was wistful about returning to Earth in Soyuz TMA-1, “I’ve been looking down quite a bit from orbit, looking down on Kazakhstan. It’s a beautiful country… I think it’s going to be a very, very interesting life experience.” The fickle

American media made much of the fact that Bowersox and Pettit would be the first American astronauts to return from ISS in a Soyuz spacecraft, but Pettit put their minds at rest, “We’ve had a heap of training for both Soyuz and Shuttle entries and either one is fine with us. I don’t think there’s any extraordinary angst about the particular entry we’re planning to do here.’’ More important to Pettit was the fact that he would soon see his wife and twin 2-year-old sons. On the subject of the loss of STS-107, Bowersox noted, “I think it’s going to be hard for Don and I, after being away from it all, to suddenly be confronted with all that emotion… But at the same time, I think it’s going to be very good for us to be back there with our friends and help them work through it and let them help us work through the changes that we’ll be going through.’’

Asked about the fact that there were only two people on the new Expedition crew, Lu said, “I think we’ll be able to do just fine.’’ On May 1, the station’s computer server went down. Malenchenko and Lu worked with controllers to solve the problem and the server was back on-line the following day. May 2 also saw the Expedition-7 crew carry out familiarisation training on the SSRMS.

The change of command ceremony took place at 13: 15, May 3, before Bowersox led his crew into Soyuz TMA-1 and handed over to Budarin, who assumed his role as Soyuz Commander. Bowersox told the new Expedition crew, “You guys have to be the two luckiest guys who come from planet Earth today. Over the next six months you get to live aboard this beautiful ship.’’ Then he turned to Malechenko and told him calmly, “Yuri, I’m ready to be relieved.’’ Of his own crew’s occupation of ISS Bowersox said, “We carried out everything we intended to, but most important is that we worked well together as an international crew.’’ Listening in Korolev, O’Keefe joked with the outgoing crew, “Put in your order for how you want your steaks done so we can have them ready for when you arrive.’’

The hatches between the two spacecraft were closed at 15: 38, and Budarin undocked Soyuz TMA-1 from the station at 18: 40. Three hours later, at 21: 07, the re-entry module landed inside Kazakhstan, some 400 km short of its predicted landing site. The offset centre of mass in the re-entry module enabled the Soyuz to generate lift, and thereby control its passage through the atmosphere, generally extending it by several hundred kilometres and aiming for the assigned target spot. Soyuz TMA-1 had defaulted to a ballistic trajectory and therefore fallen “short’’ of its target. During their unplanned ballistic re-entry, the crew, who had spent 5.5 months in microgravity, were subjected to more g forces than they had expected. When the main parachute deployed, some of its lines snapped, including one that carried the main communications antenna. As a result, the Soyuz TMA-1 re­entry module completed its final descent and landing in radio silence. Touchdown was also harder than expected and Pettit’s shoulder was injured. The wind caught the parachute and dragged the module 13 m across the steppe, before leaving it on its side. Recovery helicopters had to re-fuel before they could reach the off-target site. Contact was made with the crew at 23 : 30, and aircrew reported that all three men were out of the spacecraft and waving to them as they landed. It would take 2.5 hours for the recovery team to reach them, so the crew lay on the ground to avoid the cardiovascular stress of gravity.

In reply to their questions about returning to Earth, Bowersox told journalists, “We could smell the dirt. We could smell the grass. It was fantastic.”

Petitt added:

“When the hatch was just cracked open, there were real Earth smells because we stirred up a fair amount of dirt when we landed. You had this fresh dirt smell, which was just a beautiful smell. It had a little bit of crushed grass in it because there was all that fresh spring grass coming up in little clumps… The next thing that hit me were all the birds chirping. It was just music to our ears.”

He continued:

“I was actually relieved to ooze out of the spacecraft and lay on Mother Earth and have a solitude moment in which to get reacquainted.”

On the subject on what had caused the switch to a ballistic re-entry trajectory Budarin was non-committal, “It’s for the specialists to figure out what was the cause. Let’s wait and see, but for now I can say that it was not our own doing.’’

The crew were recovered by helicopter, with Pettit being placed on a stretcher. The following day they were flown to Baikonur. Both the Russians and the Americans played down the difficulties at the end of the Expedition-6 flight.

Having watched the recovery from TsUP in Korolev, O’Keefe was damning when he returned to America. He told journalists that just 8 hours before the landing he had used new cellphone technology to talk to the crew on ISS, but following their off-target landing there was no communication for 2.5 hours. “First we’re talking on a cellphone, and eight hours later we couldn’t reach them… Two tin cans and a string would have been an improvement. It was an absolutely phenomenal contrast.’’ The Russians began an investigation into the cause of the spacecraft leaving its controlled trajectory and commencing a ballistic re-entry. On June 28, it was announced that the fault had been identified as having been caused by the spacecraft’s “yaw gyroscope experiencing gimbal-lock when its angular excursion exceeded its permissible range of 54 degrees.’’ RSC Energia said that corrections would be made to the control systems of all later Soyuz TMA spacecraft.

Prior to flying to ISS, Bowersox had been asked how he viewed the end of the flight, and what, in his mind, would make the Expedition-6 occupation a successful one. Answering, before the loss of STS-107, he replied:

“I guess the most important thing will have been the unity of the crew at the end of the flight. To be successful we have to come back as a crew that was able to support each other, able to forgive each other when we made mistakes or when we accidentally offended someone, when we didn’t mean to, that we were able to get past all those human frailties, and stay united as a supportive crew. And that’s not just the three of us on board but also with our team on the ground, because there will be tons of frustrations that will come down upon us as we’re going through our mission. We’ll be in a high-stress environment, and typically when people are stressed and they have more stress being dumped on them, their teams can break down. And what we want to do instead is to support each other so that we become stronger with that stress. And if we can do that, we’ll be successful; everything else will work out and take care of itself.’’

Judged against that description, Expedition-6 had been very successful indeed.

Progress M-51 was originally scheduled for launch on December 22, 2004, but was delayed by 24 hours as a result of the off-nominal ISS orbital boost carried out on

November 19. The Progress was launched at 17: 19, December 23, and followed a standard rendezvous pattern to dock to Zvezda’s wake at 18:58, December 25. Docking was delayed for approximately 30 minutes so that it would occur over Russian ground stations. Throughout the approach Sharipov stood ready to take over manual control using the TORU system, but his skills were not needed. After the docking, Korolev’s controller told the crew, “Hip, hip, hooray; Congratulations.” Chiao replied, “We’re looking forward to our big Christmas present, the arrival of Progress. Merry Christmas, to all of the people keeping us safe up here.’’

The crew took the remainder of the day off to celebrate the Christmas holiday and then had an extended sleep period that night. They opened the hatches into the new Progress the following day. In a Christmas message, Chiao remarked, “Salizhan and I are privileged to be the only humans off our beautiful planet. Although we miss our families and friends, our role on board this international complex is a message for all of us with a fundamental curiosity to explore.’’

On December 26 an earthquake in the seabed below the Indian Ocean sent a tsunami crashing into the coastlines of several Asian countries, causing thousands of deaths and millions of dollars worth of damage. Around the world a major relief effort swung into action. The Expedition-10 crew took photographs of the disaster

area to show coastal change. Those pictures were sent down to Houston for analysis. Sharipov and Chiao then spent the remainder of the year unloading the new Progress and completing routine maintenance. Houston played a recording of the song Auld Lang Syne over the radio link to mark the moment of New Year. The crew also received greetings from controllers in Korolev.

In a press conference from space the two cosmonauts talked about the weight they had lost as a result of having to ration their food intake until Progress M-51 had arrived at the station. Chiao remarked:

“Both of us ended up losing a few pounds, but I guess that’s nothing we can really complain about… A lot of people would be happy to lose about 5 or 10 pounds. We looked at it as kind of a challenge, kind of a camping adventure, roughing it, I guess.’’

He added:

“All throughout this whole thing, we kept real good spirits. Salizhan and I have been keeping each other up, joking around, and it’s been very pleasant even with some of the shortages.’’

Chiao blamed the food shortage on Foale and Padalka, who had sought permission to eat some of the next crew’s food when their own return to Earth was delayed:

“The last crew had gotten into our food and had failed to actively report to the ground what they had taken out of our allotment.’’

During January 1, 2005, air bubbles in the plumbing caused the Elektron oxygen generator to shut down again. Sharipov carried out a number of repairs over the following days, but the unit performed erratically. The crew purged gases from the system’s lines and replaced the electrolyte in the unit, and finally had it running again by January 6. Later that day it was switched from the primary pump to a back-up and continued to function intermittently. On January 4, while the Elektron was not operating, oxygen was added to the station’s atmosphere from tanks in Progress M-51.

The crew observed the Russian Orthodox Christmas on January 7, but both men performed experiments. The first week of the year saw the crew follow a light main­tenance schedule, including the NEUROCOG experiment, which studied how the body’s sense of balance adapted to microgravity. The astronauts sent a message of condolence to the victims of the tsunami. Throughout the following week, the crew assisted Houston in updating 1.5 million lines of computer code. They also began preparations for the Stage EVA planned for January 26. They had a day off on January 15, although controllers in Korolev fired the rockets in Progress M-51 to raise the station’s altitude and place it in the correct position to receive Progress M – 52, due to dock on March 2. These burns are not really designed to change the

altitude, but by setting the altitude to achieve a specific orbital period the phasing could be arranged to suit the rendezvous requirements of the ship about to launch.

The third week of the month was spent preparing for the EVA, charging pressure suit batteries, preparing tools, checking out their Orlan suits, and spending time on the station’s stationary bicycles to complete cardiovascular evaluation exercises. Meanwhile, controllers in Houston completed vibration and electrical current tests on CMG-2, which was run at each of its 15 available speeds over a period of 4 hours. Solar storms on January 18 and 20 led to instructions that both men should shelter in Zvezdawhenever the station passed above the most heavily affected regions of Earth’s atmosphere. Chiao and Sharipov marked their 100th day in space on January 21. The previous night the Elektron unit had shut down and only began working again after air bubbles in the water loop had been purged.

On January 26, both men donned their Orlan EVA suits and sealed themselves in Pirs. As on previous EVAs undertaken by caretaker crews, ISS’ systems were either powered off or placed into automated mode, and the hatches between the Russian and American sectors of the station were closed. After venting the atmosphere in Pirs they opened the outer hatch at 02: 43 and exited. Their first tasks were to set up the tethers and tools for the tasks ahead. Next they installed a Universal Work Platform (Russian initials: URM-D) and a base plate (FP-20) at the forward end of the large conical section of Zvezda, before mounting the German Robotics Component Verification on ISS (ROKVISS) experiment on the platform along with its antenna and cabling. When the 0.5 m long, two-jointed manipulator arm, designed to test small robotic joints in the vacuum of space, was first powered on it did not receive power. Chiao had to return to the location and re-seat the two power plugs. The system would be operated from the ground in Germany, or from a workstation inside Zvezda. The two astronauts then moved the tray holding the sole remaining Japanese MPAC/SEEDs experiment mounted on the exterior of Zvezda during the Expedi­tion-3 occupation, in October 2001. They removed it from its present mounting bracket and moved it to an adjacent bracket, in order to facilitate the installation of the ROKVISS antenna. Moving on again, they inspected vents on the exterior of Zvezda used by a number of environmental control systems, including the Elektron unit. Sharipov reported seeing both brown and white residues near the Elektron and Vozdukh carbon dioxide scrubber vents, and an oily substance on the thermal insulation surrounding the vents. Returning to Pirs, they installed the Biorisk – MSN experiment near the airlock’s hatch. Biorisk contained bracket-mounted canisters holding micro-organisms that would be exposed to the space environment before being returned to Earth for analysis. Entering the airlock, they sealed the hatch at 08 : 11, after an EVA lasting 5 hours 28 minutes. Returning to the station, they removed their suits, opened the hatches to the American sector, and reactivated the systems. They began a sleep period early in the afternoon, had the following day off, and spent the following week reconfiguring ISS for crewed operations. The last day of January was spent dressed in Sokol pressure suits, rehearsing re-entry procedures in Soyuz TMA-5.

As February began the two men began preparing for the Space Shuttle’s return to flight. On February 1, Chiao reported that he had finished packing all American

articles due to be returned to Earth in Discovery’s MPLM on the STS-114 flight. Work was continuing to pack Russian equipment. Chiao also completed an inventory of the food remaining onboard. The crew also worked on their national experiments. These included three runs of the Russian Plasma Crystal experiment, EarthKam, and the Space Experiment Module Satchel (SEMS). The last contained six school experiments in separate vials and had been delivered on the last Progress. Chiao also updated the software in the malfunctioning Space Integrated GPS/Inertial Navigation System, which supplied Global Positioning Satellite information to the station’s guidance and navigation system.

On February 8 the two Asian crewmembers celebrated Chinese New Year. On the same day there was a temporary loss of attitude control, when a wrong command sent from the ground caused one of the CMGs to become saturated. The Russian thruster system on Zvezda assumed the responsibility for attitude control, until the CMG could be reset. The crew spent several hours auditing the EMUs and their supporting equipment held in the Quest airlock. Chiao also replaced the metal oxide (METOX) canisters, which scrubbed the used oxygen in the suits. Both men completed their ongoing experiment programme throughout the week.

The Elektron oxygen generation system was powered off, after failing twice overnight, to allow the station to be repressurised, three times, using the oxygen remaining in the tanks on Progress M-51. The motors on Progress M-51 were used to adjust the station’s orbit on February 15. Remaining propellant was then pumped from the Progress to tanks in Zvezda later in the week. Sharipov removed the KURS docking system from the Progress for return to Earth on Discovery when Shuttle flights resumed. The crew also spent several days carrying out the semi-annual inspection and service of their treadmill, which involved partially disassembling the machine. In Houston, flight controllers powered up the Mobile Base System on the truss, and found they could not receive video from one of the cart’s cameras.

Most of the following week was spent packing rubbish into Progress M-51 prior to its departure. The spacecraft’s hatch was closed on February 25. On the same day American controllers in Houston completed 2 days of tests on the SSRMS, using the new software that had been loaded the previous month. This was the first time the SSRMS had been able to be operated from Earth. Throughout the test Chiao stood at the arm’s operating station in Destiny, ready to assume control if required. The test was successful and Chiao’s intervention was not required. This upgrade in capability would enable the ground to manipulate the arm to observe future two-person EVAs.

Progress M-51 was undocked at 11:06 on February 27. The cargo vessel was manoeuvred to a safe distance where Russian flight controllers used it in a 10-day long series of engineering tests.

“I think, historically… when we look back fifty years to this time, we won’t remember the experiments that were performed, we won’t remember the assembly that was done, we may barely remember any individuals. What we will know was that countries came together to do the first joint international project, and we will know that that was the seed that started us off to the Moon and Mars. Because then, I know, when we’re looking back from Mars, for example, it won’t be just the United States, or it won’t just be China or Russia: it will be an international mission. And it will have come out of the very fact that we’re doing the Inter­national Space Station today.’’

The seventh Progress was launched towards ISS at 15: 13 March 21, carrying the usual combination of water, propellant, and dry goods. Following a standard Soyuz rendezvous Progress M1-8 docked to Zvezda’s wake port at 15: 58 March 24. Pressure and leak checks were completed before the hatches between the two vehicles were opened. The Expedition-4 crew began unloading the new cargo the following day.

Bursch wrote,

“I was amazed at how much I anticipated the arrival of this Progress. I thought that because we had e-mail and the ‘phone,’ that I wouldn’t think the Progress was such a big deal… but it was! I underestimated how much I would anticipate the arrival of fresh fruit and care packages… something from Earth… something from home… that my friends and family had touched not too long ago!! … Everything went well, and after pressure checks we opened the hatch about midnight. I felt as if it was Christmas morning! Everything was tightly packed, but we managed to get to our care packages after about an hour. I honestly forgot that we hadn’t been visited for the past three months… and something ‘fresh’ from home was VERY welcome! We got new books on CD, cards, letters, pictures and some new DVDs.’’

On March 29, Walz performed hammer tests on the ARIS-ICE.

EUROPEAN COMMERCIALISATION

ESA signed an agreement on March 22 with 11 companies to promote commercial­isation of ISS in Europe by making access to the station easier for those companies. ESA agreed to assist the companies in question to promote awareness of the com­mercial possibilities of ISS within Europe, while supporting projects for such use made by the companies in question. With almost 33% of ESA space on ISS allocated to commercial use rented through the Agency, a spokesman said of the agreement,

‘‘The co-operation agreement between ESA and our strategic partners in industry forms the foundation of a true partnership between the public and private sectors. With the complementary skills of ESA and our partners we are now in a very good position to optimise the services we can offer to those customers who recognise the unique utilisation opportunities of the International Space Station.’’

At this time ESA awarded a 03.7 million contract to the German DLR Space Centre to establish the Columbus Control Centre at the German Space Operations Centre, in Oberpfaffenhofen. The new centre would also control Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) operations when they commenced. In the contemporary launch manifest, both the Columbus launch to ISS and the first ATV launch were due to take place in 2004.

Meanwhile, Node-2, the first of two Nodes built by Aleno Spazio in Turin, Italy, had completed its Acceptance Review and was due to be delivered to ESA in mid­May. Due to be launched by Shuttle in 2004, Node-2 would serve as a mounting for Columbus and Kibo. Node-2 would be named “Harmony’’. Following ESA accep­tance testing the Harmony and Columbus modules were to be shipped to KSC in Florida, where they were officially handed over to NASA and placed in line for their respective Shuttle launches.