EXPEDITION-12

After the standard weekend of light work McArthur and Tokarev began working full time on their experiment programme, as well as commencing their housekeeping, maintenance, and daily exercise regimes. They reviewed procedures for an emergency escape from the station, changed a battery in Zvezda, and rearranged the items stowed inside Unity. McArthur began work with the Pulmonary Function Facility in Destiny. Both men also began the first of a series of Renal Stone Experiment food logs and gave urine samples for the same experiment. By the second week of October the new crew were beginning preparations for their first Stage EVA, which would be made from Quest and would be the first to use American EMUs since 2003. The 5.5-hour EVA was planned for November 7. The Elektron oxygen generator in Zvezda shut down unexpectedly on October 13. The problem was a result of a partially filled source water tank being connected to the system, rather than a full tank.

Progress M-54’s engines were to be used to boost the station’s orbit on October 18. The engines began thrusting at the correct time but the procedure was aborted when a Russian navigation computer lost telemetry and shut them down. Trouble­shooting began at Korolev. On October 17 and 21 the station’s atmosphere was repressurised using oxygen from Progress M-55. Meanwhile, planning was underway at Korolev for another attempt to repair the Elektron unit. Tokarev purged the air bubbles from the Elektron oxygen generator’s systems during a 5-hour work session on October 22, thereby restoring the unit to use. During the same week, McArthur checked out the second Pulmonary Function Facility, developed by ESA for use inside their Columbus laboratory module and carried to ISS on STS-114, the unit had been installed in HRF-2 in Destiny.

On October 25, the two men carried out routine tests of the two EMUs that they would wear during their first EVA. The following day they reviewed the procedures for donning and operating the EMUs. On October 27, they donned the suits and rehearsed their EVA activities inside the station. Meanwhile, on October 26, Russian controllers had performed a test-firing of Progress M-55’s engines, using a different manifold to that used during the aborted re-boost firing. The engines operated normally and there was no loss of telemetry. Tokarev celebrated his birthday on October 29. The following day, both men worked to strip down and sample the airflow in the Trace Contaminant Control System. Engineers had noticed a reduction in the airflow and the astronauts’ work led to the conclusion that replacement parts might be required. Following re-assembly, the unit continued to work at a reduced

airflow rate. During the week they also replaced a faulty pump in a thermal control loop in Zvezda, and replaced smoke detectors, also in Zvezda.

McArthur and Tokarev marked the fifth anniversary of permanent human presence on ISS on November 2, 2005. They sent messages to everyone who had flown to the station and to the engineers and scientists from 16 nations who supported its activities.

At 10:32, November 7, McArthur and Tokarev began their first EVA as they placed their EMUs on to battery power and began depressurising Quest. During the preparations they had to repressurise the airlock and re-enter the inner chamber of the two-chamber module and reset a misaligned valve. They then had to seal them­selves back in the outer chamber and depressurise it for a second time. Exiting the airlock, they collected their tools and retrieved a stanchion for a television camera from a toolbox mounted on the exterior of Quest, before making their way to the outer limit of the Port-1 ITS, where they installed a television camera on a stanchion and installed this on the outer limit of the Port-1 ITS. When power was applied to the camera the first pictures were received just before 13: 00. The new camera would be used during future assembly tasks, when additional SAWs would be added to the port side of the ITS. The camera should have been installed as part of the final STS-114 EVA, but the installation was delayed to allow for the removal of the two gap fillers from the underside of the orbiter. Their next job was a “get-ahead” task. They removed a failed Rotary Joint Motor Controller (RJMC), a box of electronics. It had not yet been used, and was to be returned to Earth on the next Shuttle for evaluation of why it had failed.

Both men then used their hands to make their way to the top of the P-6 Truss, the “highest” point on the station. There, McArthur removed the now defunct Floating Potential Probe and pushed it away from the station. It would burn up when it re­entered Earth’s atmosphere, in approximately 100 days. It had been installed by the STS-97 crew in December 2000, to help define the electrical environment around the station’s SAWs. Images taken on STS-114 had shown it to be breaking up, so the decision was taken to remove it. With both of their primary tasks completed, the crew received permission to progress on to a second “get ahead’’ task. They removed a failed circuit breaker controlling redundant heating on the Mobile Transporter, and installed a new one. The two astronauts then returned to Quest after an EVA lasting 5 hours 22 minutes. In the days following the EVA both men spent time servicing the suits they had worn.

On November 10, Progress M-54’s thrusters were fired to boost the station’s orbit. The 33-minute, two-stage re-boost was the longest yet carried out using the engines of a Progress spacecraft, and was designed to place the station in the correct orbit for the arrival of Progress M-55, in December. During the week the station toilet control panel malfunctioned and Tokarev replaced it. The following week, McArthur spent several hours photographing the Binary Colloidal Alloy Test experiment that had been undisturbed in microgravity for over a year.

After configuring the station for automatic function the crew sealed themselves inside Soyuz TMA-7 on November 18. At 03: 46, Tokarev undocked the Soyuz from Pirs and manoeuvred along the station to dock at Zarya’s nadir, at 04: 05. McArthur and Tokarev returned to ISS just after 10:00. The newly installed Port-1 ITS television camera transmitted images of the manoeuvre, which cleared Pirs’ nadir for the crew’s second Stage EVA, during which they would wear Orlan suits. The EVA was originally planned for December 7, but was under review as the crew moved their spacecraft. Mission managers were considering delaying the EVA to early 2006, in order to give the crew more time to unload Progress M-54 and prepare it for undocking.

McArthur powered up the SSRMS on November 21, and put it through a series of engineering tests. He left it in a suitable position for its cameras to monitor the crew’s second EVA, which had been rescheduled to February 2, 2006 by that time. A possible third Stage EVA was cancelled, because the “get ahead’’ tasks had been achieved during their first EVA, in November. November 24 was a day off for the crew to celebrate the American Thanksgiving Holiday.

During the week ending December 2, McArthur worked with the HRF-2 experiment rack in Destiny. He set up a refrigerated centrifuge and worked with the BCAT-3 and InSPACE Magnetic Materials experiments. He also replaced fuses in a Trace Contaminant Monitor in Destiny. At the same time Tokarev used oxygen contained in Progress M-54 to repressurise the station. Propellant was also trans­ferred from Progress to Zarya. Tokarev also installed a muffled adjustable fan in the crew quarters to reduce noise in that region. Both men spent time collecting rubbish for disposal in Progress M-54. Oxygen from the spacecraft was pumped into the station’s atmosphere and the 221 kg of propellant that it carried was transferred to Zvezda’s tanks. McArthur replaced an air circulation fan in one of Destiny’s experiment racks and updated the software used by all five experiment racks in the laboratory module. Tokarov repaired air ducts in the American sector, thereby improving airflow in the modules. He also installed muffled fans in the sleeping quarters, thereby reducing the noise that the fans in that important area produced. As part of the preparation for Progress M-54’s undocking they removed the space­craft’s Kurs automatic docking system for return to Earth. Ultimately, plans to undock Progress M-54 on December 20 were cancelled in favour of keeping the craft docked to the station for several more months, thereby allowing the crew to continue to use its oxygen supply and to load it with additional rubbish. The second week of December was taken up with biomedical experiments and maintenance work. On December 16, one of two cables carrying power, command data, and video to and from the Mobile Transporter was severed, causing loss of data. Telemetry suggested that the cable had been deliberately cut by the disconnect actuator system, designed to cut the cable if it became snagged or tangled. This was a malfunction of the cutting system. The cable being severed resulted in one of two redundant electrical power circuit breakers being tripped. The second cable, on the other side of the ITS, remained undamaged.

As the year drew to a close, ESA announced that technical difficulties had led to the first Ariane-V/ATV flight being delayed by almost a whole year, to 2007. ESA had also transferred the launch of the European Robotic Arm from the American Shuttle to a Russian Proton launch vehicle. A third ESA announcement gave details of how the organisation had refused the requested $51 million to undertake a joint

Preparatory Design Study with Roscosmos of Russia’s proposed Kliper spacecraft. The vote went against the proposal because ESA would have no control over the programme and would receive only minor industrial contracts. NASA also had an announcement: with the redirection of the American human spaceflight programme towards the new Project Constellation, the Administration had already begun cancelling some experiment projects designed to be flown to ISS. On the positive side, Congress had approved the purchase of additional access to Russian Soyuz spacecraft, despite the wording of the Iran Non-proliferation Act. The new spacecraft would provide access to ISS and CRV responsibilities for American astronauts through 2012. It was accepted that some of the “taxi” flights would carry spaceflight participants in the third couch. At the same time, Russia agreed to double the production rate of Soyuz spacecraft from 2009, thereby allowing the ISS Expedition crew to be made up to six people, supported by two Soyuz CRVs docked to the station at all times. Seven Soyuz spacecraft would be flown in the period 2008-2011. Eight Progress spacecraft would fly in the same period.