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ISS On-Orbit Status 3/9/03

All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted 
previously or below. To enjoy their well-deserved Sunday rest, the 
crew had a very light schedule, with just a few regular maintenance 
tasks and some optional task list items waiting in the U.S. and 
Russian "job jars".

FE-2/SO Don Pettit awoke to words of thanks and appreciatetion from 
POC (Payload Operations Center) on his diligent MSG (Microgravity 
Science Glovebox) troubleshooting yesterday. More of the latter is 
scheduled for tomorrow and beyond.

FE-1 Nikolai Budarin performed the daily checkup of the newly 
activated BIO-5 Rasteniya-2/Lada-2 ("Plants-2") experiment that 
researches plant growth and development under spaceflight conditions.

Afterwards, he tended the SVO water supply system, taking readings of 
the supply and SP toilet flush counters for calldown to the ground. 
Nikolai also performed the periodic check-out of the GShT Elektron 
oxygen generator's gas/liquid system (VM) for air bubbles.

Budarin's routine work included the daily servicing of the SOSh life 
support system, incl. ASU toilet subsystem, and Pettit prepared the 
IMS inventory database for automated file import/export.

Working off the Russian task list, Budarin unstowed and installed the
Molniya-SM equipment at Service Module (SM) window #3 to conduct 
another round of the LSO experiment, loading the program from a hard 
disk into the EGE 1 laptop and starting long-term recording. The 
experiment will be dismantled on 3/12 (Wednesday), hopefully after 
catching some sprites.  [Objective of LSO is to study rare optical 
phenomena occurring in the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere, 
so-called "sprites" (i.e., puzzling glow phenomena observed above 
thunderstorm clouds). LSO was originally part of Claudie Haigneré's 
French "Andromeda" payload package of taxi mission 3S that could not 
be performed as planned during Increment 4 due to an ISS flight 
attitude conflict. LSO research objectives are very similar to those 
of the Russian Molniya-SM, being about storm phenomena and other 
related events in the Earth's equatorial regions. LSO is controlled 
from the French EGE-1 laptop, which needs to be loaded with orbital 
sighting predictions using an up-to-date NORAD tracking TLE (two-line 
element).]

For the task-listed Russian Diatomeya ocean observations experiment, 
Nikolai today focused cameras on selected seawater algae bloom (TsKO) 
features and cloud structures of bioproductive regions (BPR) areas in 
the waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. [Targets in the 
Atlantic included large TsKO linear blooms, the northern frontal zone 
of the Gulf Stream, coastal upwelling along North-West Africa, the 
Bengal upwelling along South Africa, the Falkland BRP and the Titanic 
oceanological zone. In the Pacific, interest was on the southern edge 
of the North Pacific Current, and in the Indian Ocean on the Agulhas 
current aquatorium, the West Wind Current's southern border at Prince 
Edward Island, and the Mozambique current of the north of the Comoros 
Islands.]

Also working from the optional Russian task list, Budarin completed 
two-day observations for the recurring Uragan ("hurricane") earth 
observations program. The images were then copied from the 
CompactFlash card to laptop for potential downlink via Regul Packet as 
well as to replaceable HDD (hard disk drive) for potential return at 
some future date. [Yesterday's Uragan targets for Nikolai's Nikon D1 
were cities of Italy's west coast, a traveling shot of the Nile River, 
the East coast of the Bab-el-Mandeb Straits, and the Azores and Canary 
Islands. Today's targets were any sections of the Turkish coast 
(Nick's choice), cities of Israel (e.g., Tel-Aviv), the city of 
Medina, and African Fault volcanoes.]

To reduce IMV (intra-module ventilation) noise, troubleshooting of Lab 
and Node air ducts, etc. was added yesterday to the U.S. "job jar" 
task list for today, with appropriate procedures uplinked before.

Among today's ground-controlled data dump activities without crew
involvement was the regular software downlink of the NaN 
(not-a-number) counter within the GNC (guidance, navigation and 
control) MDM. This checks whether a NaN condition has been output by 
the GPS (global positioning system) receiver in the previous week. 
[GPS is normally used by the GNC MDM as attitude and state data 
source, unless conditions require use of Russian data (as currently 
for attitude and rate). On 9/24/02, a problem with GPS firmware, 
involving NaN values, caused both GNC MDMs to fail. This was 
subsequently fixed with new s/w patches. The regular check-up 
continues with the new R3 s/w.]

MCC-Moscow was scheduled to perform a Soyuz TMA-1 accelerometer test 
today, starting at about 2:30pm EST.

Today's targets for the CEO (crew earth observations) program were 
Nairobi, Kenya (Kenya's capital city was just right of track. The crew 
was also to try for more oblique views of the ice fields of Mount 
Kilimanjaro, further right of track), Cape Town, South Africa (this 
pass offered a nadir view of this important South African city with 
its fine harbor and rugged, picturesque surroundings), El Paso, Texas 
(this far-western Texas city, situated on the Rio Grande River, should 
have been visible just left of track. Sun glint views of the Rio 
Grande itself may also have been possible), La Paz, Bolivia (clouds 
may have been an issue, but otherwise the crew had a nadir pass in 
high sun for this target), Patagonian Glaciers (this was the first 
good view of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field in some weeks now. 
Weather looked excellent, and the crew was asked to document details 
of the glaciers in late summer, especially those of the northern flank 
of the ice field), and Maro (the crew had a nadir fair-weather pass 
over this isolated island in the outer Hawaiian archipelago. They were 
asked to use the long lenses for details of the coral reef 
structures).

CEO images can be viewed at the website
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov

ISS Orbit (as of this morning, 7:16am EST [= epoch]):
Mean altitude -- 389.2 km
Apogee -- 397.1 km
Perigee -- 381.3 km
Period -- 92.34 min.
Inclination (to Equator) -- 51.63 deg
Eccentricity -- 0.0011665
Orbits per 24-hr. day -- 15.59
Mean altitude loss in last 24 hours -- 150 m
Revolutions since FGB/Zarya launch (Nov. '98) -- 24545

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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