International Space Station status report:
SS05-045
NASA and Russian flight controllers outside Moscow are in control of
the International Space Station, after mission control in Houston was
evacuated ahead of Hurricane Rita.
Aboard the station, Expedition 11 Commander Sergei Krikalev and Flight
Engineer John Phillips have a key piece of life support equipment up and
running, just in time for the next space station crew.
The crew activated the repaired Elektron oxygen generator this week.
The Elektron, which extracts oxygen from water, was put into service early
Monday. Krikalev and Phillips repaired the Elektron with a new liquids
unit that was brought up on a recent Progress spacecraft.
Krikalev and Phillips also performed maintenance on the on-board treadmill,
a key piece of exercise equipment to help keep astronauts' bones and muscles
strong during long stays in zero-gravity. They worked on an experiment
designed to test the effects of certain compounds on kidney stones, and
they collected water samples to be analyzed once they return to Earth.
The Expedition 11 crew is nearing the end of its six-month stay on the
station, and crew members spent part of the week packing up their return
spacecraft, the same Russian Soyuz that brought them to the station in
April. They also tested out their shock-absorbing seats for their landing,
scheduled for October 10, U.S. time.
With Hurricane Rita strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico and targeting
the Texas shoreline, the space station program activated a well-rehearsed
plan to allow flight controllers based at NASA's Johnson Space Center,
Houston, to evacuate. They transitioned full control of the station to
Moscow, where Russian mission control and a permanently staffed cadre
of NASA flight controllers, known as the Houston Support Group, are keeping
the station operating smoothly.
Other agency resources were tapped to ensure the station's safe flight.
For example, at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., two flight
controllers arrived from Houston to maintain communications with the station
through Goddard's Network Integrated Communications flight control room.
The next space station crew, Expedition 12's Bill McArthur and Valery
Tokarev, are beginning their journey toward launch. They traveled this
week from the Russian training facility at Star City to the Baikonur Cosmodrome
in Kazakhstan, where they'll launch to the station Sept. 30 aboard a Soyuz.
During their station stay, McArthur and Tokarev will mark five years
of continuous human presence in orbit and pursue the station's mission
of learning how to live and work for long periods in space.
For information about the space station on the Internet, visit: www.nasa.gov/station
For information on NASA's preparations for Hurricane Rita on the Internet,
visit: www.nasa.gov/rita
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