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2003
Report #17 
4 p.m. CDT, Friday, April 18, 2003 
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas 
 
The Expedition 6 crewmembers on board the International Space Station
stepped up their preparations for returning to Earth this week, while
the next permanent crew for the station received its final
certification for a launch scheduled for the end of next week. 

Monday the Expedition crewmembers -- Commander Ken Bowersox, Flight
Engineer Nikolai Budarin, and NASA ISS Science Officer Don Pettit-got
into their Sokol launch and entry suits for a fit check in the
shock-absorbing seats in the Descent Module of the Soyuz TMA-1
spacecraft docked to the station's Pirs Docking Compartment.
Wednesday morning, taking advantage of their ability to look at the
actual hardware on orbit, the crewmembers spent an hour answering
questions from members of the flight control team in Houston about
the details of several maintenance and repair tasks completed during
the past few months. Packing of personal gear, and other preparations
for departure and landing, continued all week.

Plans for the launch of the next crew to the International Space
Station advanced this week, too. On Monday at the General Designer's
Review in Moscow officials confirmed that the Soyuz TMA-2 vehicle is
ready for launch. Today officials at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training
Center in Star City, Russia, certified the Expedition 7 crewmembers
for flight. 

Commander Yuri Malenchenko and NASA ISS Science Officer Ed Lu are due
to depart Star City for the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch site in
Kazakhstan on Sunday to make final preparations for their launch
April 26, at 9:54 a.m. Baikonur time (10:54 p.m. CDT on Friday, April
25).  The new crew should arrive at the station early in the morning
of Monday, April 28, to begin six days of handover briefings with the
returning crew.  Bowersox, Budarin and Pettit are scheduled to land
in the old Soyuz on May 4; Bowersox and Pettit will be the first
American astronauts ever to land in a Soyuz spacecraft. 

While spending more time on departure preparations this week, the
station crew continued their science operations.  All three
participated in biomedical experiments looking into lung function and
kidney stone formation in microgravity, and each day Pettit oversaw
experiment runs of the InSpace investigation in the Destiny
Laboratory's Microgravity Sciences Glovebox.  Pettit has been
applying and removing magnetic forces to particles and clumps of
particles suspended in paramagnetic fluids for the benefit of
investigators looking to develop better fluids for brake and
vibration damping systems. 

All three crewmembers also continued their participation in several
research protocols to learn more about how the human body reacts to
extended periods in a weightless environment.

Thursday the Expedition 6 crewmembers participated in another
educational event, answering questions about their mission and about
living in space posed by students from Mountain Park Elementary
School in Roswell, Ga., who have been participating in a year-long
celebration of the Centennial of Flight. 

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 the launch of Soyuz
TMA-2, scheduled for late Friday, April 25, or sooner if events
warrant. 

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