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russian
OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE
about the mated flight and undocking
of the Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station
 

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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