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2003
Report #16 
4 p.m. CDT, Friday, April 11, 2003 
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas 
 
A remarkable week of spacewalk and science activities is winding down
for the International Space Station's Expedition 6 crew, Commander
Ken Bowersox, Flight Engineer Nikolai Budarin and NASA ISS Science
Officer Don Pettit. 

During a 6-hour, 26-minute spacewalk Tuesday, Bowersox and Pettit
reconfigured critical power cables and continued the external
outfitting of the station. They also completed a number of get-ahead
tasks for future ISS assembly.

Science experiments this week measured the amount of radiation the
astronauts receive and the possible changes in their lung function,
before and after spacewalks. Other experiments studied fluids used in
mechanical lines such as those in automobile brake systems for
possible improvement, and allowed middle school students around the
world to command a camera to take pictures of Earth from the station.

Bowersox and Pettit maneuvered the space station robotic arm,
Canadarm2, three times this week. The first session, on Sunday, put
the robotic arm in position to use its cameras to view the spacewalk
and the next two completed the on-orbit checkout of robotic
components and gathered data from a sensor. 

The altitude of the station was raised to an average 244 statute
miles in preparation for the arrival of a new Soyuz spacecraft and
its crew. Expedition 7 Commander Yuri Malenchenko and Flight
Engineer/NASA ISS Science Officer Ed Lu traveled to the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan from their training base in Star City,
Russia, to inspect the Soyuz TMA-2 vehicle in which they will be
launched on April 26 to begin a six-month mission on the ISS. They
also did fit checks today.

Information on the crew's activities aboard the space station, future
launch dates, as well as station sighting opportunities from anywhere
on the Earth, is available on the Internet at: 

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/

Details on station science operations can be found on an Internet
site administered by the Payload Operations Center at NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., at: 

http://scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov/

The next ISS status report will be issued on Friday, April 18, or
sooner if events warrant. 

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