March 19, 2001 Korolev, Moscow region
The mated flight of the International Space Station (ISS)
and U.S. Space Shuttle Discovery is completed.
The Discovery Orbiter undocked from the ISS at 07:31:52
Moscow time and following its fly-around was transferred
to an autonomous flight with a landing slated March 21.
Within eight days of the mated ISS/Space Shuttle flight
all scheduled activities program was accomplished. The Space
Station Expedition One crew (ISS-1) made a handover to the
Expedition Two crew (ISS-2) consisting of Yury Usachev,
the crew commander, S.P. Korolev RSC Energia cosmonaut researcher,
and James Voss and Susan Helms, NASA astronauts. The cargoes
delivered by the Space Shuttle Discovery were accommodated
on the ISS, and the descent cargoes and hardware were transferred
to Discovery. During the mated flight the U.S. astronauts
performed two egresses into space of an overall duration
of about 10 hours, in the course of which further assembly
activities were conducted on the USOS. Three ISS reboost
maneuvers were performed by using the Orbiter thrusters.
Three press conferences of the crews with specialists and
journalists were conducted, including 17 March press conference
for Russian mass media with Russian cosmonauts Yury Gidzenko,
Sergei Krikalev (ISS-1 flight engineers) and Yury Usachev
(ISS-2 commander) of about 20 min. The cosmonauts told about
the fulfilled and scheduled activities aboard the ISS, and
answered questions.
The Expedition One crew (ISS-1) returned to Earth after
a 138-day flight aboard the Space Station and Discovery
Orbiter. The ISS-1 crew consists of Russian cosmonauts Yury
Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev and U.S. astronaut William
Shepherd.
At the moment the International Space Station consists of
the Soyuz TM-31 manned vehicle, Russian Service Module Zvezda,
Progress M-44 cargo vehicle, Functional Cargo Block Zarya,
U.S. modules Unity and Destiny. The complex mass is about
115,8 t.
According to the data from the Lead Operational Control
Team (Flight Director is pilot-cosmonaut V.A Soloviev),
the International Space Station travels in orbit with the
following parameters: inclination of 51.6°, maximum and
minimum altitudes of 404.4 and 381.7 km, respectively. The
orbital period is 92.2 minutes.
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