ISS - Expedition 41 Mission patch.
September 15, 2014
Commander Max Suraev and Flight Engineers Reid Wiseman and Alexander Gerst began their first full workweek Monday as a three-person crew aboard the International Space Station, while the three additional flight engineers who will round out the Expedition 41 crew spent the day training for next week’s launch to the orbiting complex.
Following the station crew’s usual 2 a.m. EDT reveille and a daily planning conference with the flight control teams around the work to discuss the activities on tap for the day, Suraev, Wiseman and Gerst conducted a fit check of the Kazbek seat liners inside their Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft docked at the Rassvet Mini-Research Module-1. The trio is scheduled to return to Earth on Nov. 10 aboard that Soyuz after nearly six months in space. They have been operating as a three-person crew since the departure of their Expedition 40 crewmates – Commander Steve Swanson and Flight Engineers Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev – on Wednesday.
Image above: European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst (left), Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev (center) and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman pose for a portrait in the Harmony node of the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA.
Suraev spent the remainder of his morning performing routine maintenance in the Russian segment of the station, which included cleaning the ventilation system in the Zvezda service module.
Wiseman meanwhile conducted some scheduled maintenance on the Waste and Hygiene Compartment -- the station’s toilet located in the Tranquility node.
Afterward, Wiseman gathered the equipment needed to outfit the vestibule of the Harmony node where the SpaceX Dragon cargo vehicle will be berthed next week. The fourth SpaceX cargo mission to the station is slated to launch Saturday at 2:16 a.m. from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The SpaceX Dragon will carry about 5,000 pounds of experiments, equipment and supplies to the orbiting laboratory.
Wiseman and Gerst will use the 57-foot Canadarm2 robotic arm to capture Dragon for its berthing to Harmony when the cargo craft rendezvous with the station on Monday, Sept. 22. Dragon will remain attached to the station for more than four weeks before it is released for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California with almost two tons of experiment samples and equipment returning from the station.
While Wiseman gathered vestibule hardware, Gerst routed cables and powered up the Robotics Work Station in the seven-windowed cupola and the backup workstation inside the Destiny lab. The crew will use the work station to command Canadarm2 for the grapple of the Dragon cargo craft.
After a break for lunch, Wiseman spent the afternoon performing annual maintenance on the COLBERT treadmill. Keeping the station’s exercise equipment in tip-top condition is a priority because each crew member needs to exercise 2.5 hours every day to prevent the loss of bone density and muscle mass that occurs during long-duration spaceflight.
Gerst meanwhile stowed one of the two spacesuits located in the Quest airlock and retrieved a third one to prepare it for some upcoming cooling loop maintenance and resizing. The next set of U.S. spacewalks from the Quest airlock is slated for October.
Afterward, Gerst used the Total Organic Carbon Analyzer to check the quality of the station’s recycled water. He then spent several hours using a sound level meter to conduct a detailed survey of the noise levels that the crew is exposed to throughout the orbiting complex.
Suraev worked with the Vizir experiment, which is designed improve the targeting of Earth photography by cosmonauts through the use of ultrasonic angle measurements. The commander rounded out his workday stowing equipment for disposal inside the ISS Progress 56 cargo ship docked to the Pirs docking compartment.
Image above: At the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Expedition 41/42 Flight Engineer Elena Serova of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) is seen inside the Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft Sept. 13 performing test procedures during the first of two "fit check" dress rehearsal activities. Image Credit: NASA/Victor Zelentsov.
Meanwhile at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the three flight engineers who will return the station’s crew to its full six-person complement spent the day preparing for their upcoming launch. NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore, Soyuz Commander Alexander Samokutyaev and Russian cosmonaut Elena Serova brushed up on rendezvous and docking training on laptop simulators in their Cosmonaut Hotel crew quarters.
Over the weekend, the trio climbed aboard their Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft in the Cosmodrome Integration Facility for the first of two “fit check” dress rehearsals of the Soyuz systems. Wilmore, Samokutyaev and Serova are scheduled to launch from Baikonur on Sept. 25, U.S. time (Sept. 26, Kazakh time) to begin a six-hour, four-orbit trek to the station.
To adjust the station’s orbit for the arrival of the TMA-14M spacecraft, ground controllers conducted a reboost of the complex Saturday night using the thrusters on the “Georges Lemaitre” Automated Transfer Vehicle docked to Zvezda. The 3-minute, 44-second firing raised the perigee of the station’s orbit by 1.2 statute miles. The station is now in a 262.8 x 253.9 mile orbit.
For more information about the International Space Station (ISS), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA.
Greetings, Orbiter.ch
