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2003
Report #14 
4 p.m. CST, Friday, April 4, 2003 
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas 
 
International Space Station crewmembers, Commander Ken Bowersox,
Flight Engineer Nikolai Budarin and NASA ISS Science Officer Don
Pettit, spent much of this week preparing for their spacewalk next
Tuesday. The 6½-hour spacewalk is scheduled to begin about 7:30 a.m.
CST, with NASA Television coverage slated to start at 6 a.m. 

Spacewalk tasks include reconfiguring power connections, providing a
second power source for one of the station's control moment
gyroscopes, securing thermal covers on quick disconnect fittings for
the station's thermal control system, and releasing a light stanchion
on one of the Crew and Equipment Translation Aid (CETA) carts.

The preparations included a talk with experts on the ground today,
spacesuit and tool battery charging through much of the week, a
detailed review Wednesday of the spacewalk timeline preceded by a
checkout of the Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER) by Pettit and
followed by a 30-minute EVA conference with experts on the ground.
Earlier in the week they had worked with EVARM (EVA Radiation
Monitoring) equipment. 

Expedition 6 crewmembers also prepared for their return home, members
gathering and packing personal items and working to put the orbiting
laboratory in top condition for its next residents. On Tuesday the
Expedition 7 crew, Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Astronaut Ed Lu,
was formally named. They are to be launched to the ISS from
Kazakhstan in a Soyuz TMA capsule on April 26. 

Bowersox, Budarin and Pettit will return to Earth in early May aboard
the Soyuz TMA now attached to the Russian segment's Pirs Docking
Compartment. They were launched Nov. 23 and have been aboard the
station since Nov. 25. Malenchenko and Lu will visit the Kazakhstan
launch site at Baikonur next week to inspect the Soyuz TMA on which
they will travel to the station. 

Russian controllers at Mission Control Moscow today used thrusters of
the unpiloted Progress cargo spacecraft docked to the Zvezda Service
Module to increase the altitude of the station in preparation for
arrival of the Expedition 7's Soyuz.  The 14-minute firing of the
Progress thrusters raised the average altitude of the station by
about 1.9 statute miles.

A wide range of science activities continues aboard the ISS.  Pettit
had spent considerable time since arriving on the station
troubleshooting the power supply of the Microgravity Sciences
Glovebox. The MSG provides a sealed environment for experiments that
involve potential hazards like fluids, flame, fumes or particulates.
After successful testing of his repairs, Pettit this week completed
the increment's first experiment runs in the facility.  The MSG
performed successfully in the InSpace (Investigating the Structure of
Paramagnetic Aggregates from Colloidal Emulsions) experiment, which
studies how particles and clumps of particles respond to an external
magnetic field.  Though the InSpace runs Monday and Tuesday produced
unexpected results, many scientists were delighted to see the MSG
working again. 

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 after next Tuesday's
spacewalk, or sooner if events warrant. 

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