. SOYUZ TMA4

Flight Crew

PADALKA, Gennady Ivanovich, 40, Russian Air Force, Russian ISS-9 and Soyuz commander, 2nd mission Previous mission: Soyuz TM28 (1998)

FINCKE, Edward Michael, 37, USAF, ISS-9 science officer KUIPERS, Andre, 45, civilian, ESA Soyuz flight engineer

Flight Log

For the ninth main expedition to the ISS, the crew would conduct a programme of 24 US and 42 Russian experiments. Many of these were continuations of experiments delivered before the loss of Columbia, but there were four new investigations. The crew’s flight plan envisaged 130 sessions, or over 200 hours, focusing on science on the station, in addition to the routine housekeeping and maintenance chores. During the first week aboard the station, the new resident crew worked with the outgoing ISS-8 crew and with Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers, who had a package of ESA experi­ments under the Dutch Expedition for Life sciences, Technology and Atmospheric (DELTA) research programme. His research included five physiological experiments, five biology experiments, single investigations in microbiology, physical sciences, and Earth observations, three technology demonstrations and five educational projects. Kuipers completed his programme and returned to Earth with the ISS-8 crew on 30 April aboard TMA3.

Settling down to their own programme, the ISS-9 crew received no visiting crews but did receive the payloads delivered on Progress M1-11, M49 and M50. All the EVAs from this expedition were conducted from the Pirs module using Russian Orlan M suits. After working on suit repairs and servicing for over a month, their first EVA (24 Jun) was abandoned after 14 minutes because of a pressure drop in the main oxygen bottle of the Orlan M suit. Following successful repairs, the crew conducted

The TMA4/ISS-9 crew inside the ISS; 1 to r Padalka, Fincke and Kuipers

their first full EVA on 30 June (5 hours 40 minutes), during which a new circuit breaker was installed on the S0 Truss to power one of the four CMG. During the next excursion (3 Aug for 4 hours 30 minutes), the crew installed reflectors and commun­ication units ready for the first ESA Automatic Transfer Vehicle (ATV, named “Jules Verne”), which is designed to carry seven tons of supplies to the station, boost the station’s orbit, and remove waste materials for atmospheric burn-up. The first flight was planned for 2006 but was subsequently delayed to 2007 or 2008. The final ISS-9 excursion (3 Sep for 5 hours 21 minutes) saw the crew install three antennas to support the ATV docking on the rear port of the Zvezda module, and fit further handrails and tether guides for future EVAs.

On 18 June, Michael Fincke made space history by becoming the first US astronaut to become a father while in space. In Houston, his wife gave birth to their second daughter, with the astronaut listening to the delivery via his wife’s cell phone and a relayed radio link through MCC-Houston. A video of the event was later sent up to the proud father.

The crew spent a significant amount of time in repairing onboard equipment, and Fincke also conducted troubleshooting diagnostics on the American EMU units after the previously reported cooling problems had been traced to water circulation pumps located inside the suits’ integrated backpacks. Fincke removed the pump and videoed it for ground specialists to analyse the problem, but the pictures failed to reveal any

obvious causes of the malfunction. Two new pumps were manifested for delivery on the next Progress mission (M50).

The crew also had ongoing problems with the Elektron oxygen generator that had been playing up for some time. Earlier in the ISS-9 residency, it briefly shut down twice, and by late August it would fail every three days or so and require a manual restart. These shutdowns were found to be centred on the liquid units (BZh in Russian) that held trapped gas inside micro-pumps, despite using purified water. The unit was put into a mode to increase oxygen production, which would raise the internal pressure of the station so that, should the unit need repairing, a lengthy shut-down would be possible without too much risk to the crew. These extensive repairs were conducted during September, with the crew installing an older unused unit, before eventually replacing the units to improve the performance of the Elektron system (although problems still remained as their residency drew to a close).

The crew completed their programme with several other maintenance tasks and returned to Earth with Russian test cosmonaut Yuri Shargin in October.

Milestones

241st manned space flight

97th Russian manned space flight

90th manned Soyuz mission

4th manned Soyuz TMA mission

37th Russian and 91st flight with EVA operations

8th ISS Soyuz mission (8S)

6th visiting mission (VC-6)

3rd resident caretaker ISS crew (2 person)

Before the next exchange of ISS resident crews occurred in October 2004, the first privately funded, non-government manned space flight took place – the sub-orbital flights of Spaceship One that won the Ansari X-Prize. These flights are covered in the Quest for Space chapter (Chapter 2).