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8 June 2003

ISS On-Orbit Status 7 June 2003

Part 2 of 2

Materials ISS Experiment (MISSE):  In progress.  Deployed outside.
Nominal and collecting data.

Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle School Students (EarthKAM):
Waiting to begin operations in July.

Coarsening in Solid-Liquid Mixtures-2 (CSLM-2):  Waiting to begin
operations.

Educational Payload Operations (EPO):  As suggested by the crew
during yesterday's (6/6) planning tagup with the ground, the planned
EPO demonstration of a Hawaiian Pu'ili flute will be deferred until
later in the Increment, to give the ground time for developing a
lesson plan that includes background content on how sound travels.
The demonstration is sponsored by the Bishop Museum in Hawaii.

Crew Earth Observation (CEO):  The crew was thanked for their efforts
to photograph the Aurora Australis activity this past week.  Also
appreciated are their timely responses to dynamic events like recent
Eastern Pacific cloud vortices.  CEO participation in the 200th
anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to follow the Missouri
and Columbia rivers for a route from the East to the Pacific Ocean,
has been highlighted in ground publications. The CEO staff has joined
a network of educators, museum and university experts and Earth
remote sensing specialists to capture images from the ISS that will
correlate space science, geology, geography, history, and literature.
In the coming weeks, orbit tracks, scheduling, and weather
permitting, new sites of particular interest will be included in the
daily target list uplink.  [See also the website "Space Station
Challenge" at http://voyager.cet.edu/iss/ ] 

Today's optional CEO targets, were Kuwait City, Kuwait (this city,
located on the coast, was near nadir), Lima, Peru (the pass offered a
nadir view of the Peruvian capital and seaport), Harpers Ferry, WVA
(LEWIS & CLARK SITE: This historic town is located at the confluence
of the Potomac River from the north and Shenandoah River from the
south as they break through the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Crew was asked
to use the long lens for details of this small target), and Phoenix,
AZ (this sprawling Arizona city was located just left of track). CEO
images can be viewed at the websites http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov

ISS Orbit  (as of this morning, 7:26am EDT [= epoch]):

Mean altitude -- 389.7 km
Apogee -- 394.1 km
Perigee -- 385.2 km
Period -- 92.35 min.
Inclination (to Equator) --  51.63 deg
Eccentricity -- 0.0006589
Orbits per 24-hr. day -- 15.59
Mean altitude loss in last 24 hours -- 80 m
Revolutions since FGB/Zarya launch (Nov. '98)  -- 25948
For more on ISS orbit and worldwide naked-eye visibility dates/times,
see http://www.hq.nasa.gov/osf/station/viewing/issvis.html

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