February 27, 2004. Korolev, Moscow Area.
The Expedition Crew 8 (ISS-8) of the International Space
Station (ISS) performed an egress into space.
This is the ninth EVA of the ISS crews from the Russian
Segment from the beginning of its operation.
The EVA objective is to perform operations under the extravehicular
activities (EVA 9) program including installation of the
Russian-European suited human body phantom on the external
surface of the Russian Service Module Zvezda, which is designed
for conduct of the Matroshka space experiment.
The egress hatch of the Russian docking compartment-module
Pirs was opened at 0:15 Moscow time.
Space operations were performed by the Russian cosmonaut
Alexander Kaleri (flight-engineer) and American astronaut
Michael Foule (commander), who prior to the EVA closed the
Space Station inter-module hatches, including the hatches
between the Russian and US Segments.
The operations were performed under control of the Lead
Operational Control Team (LOCT) in Moscow Mission Control
Center (MCC-M), which controls the ISS Russian Segment flight
in interaction with the American Mission Control Center
(Houston, the USA). The Flight Director is Pilot-Cosmonaut
V.A. Soloviev.
In the course of the final EVA phase the telemetry showed
a degradation of A. Kaleri's spacesuit cooling support system,
that was voiced down by him. To assure the cosmonaut safety
a decision was taken to reduce the time of the crew spacewalk,
taking into account that the main objective of the EVA was
achieved, and major part of the planned activities was completed.
Upon completion of the partially reduced EVA program A.
Kaleri and M. Foule came back to module Pirs, having closed
the egress hatch at 4:13.
The EVA program was performed in the Russian ground site
coverage. Outside this coverage the data exchange between
the ISS and Moscow Mission Control Center (MCC-M) was performed
through the U.S. facilities.
The off-nominal situation on-line analysis performed by
LOCT together with the crew after spacesuits doffing showed
that a comment about A. Kaleri spacesuit performance was
mostly likely caused by a decrease of the cooling water
flow rate through the spacesuit water cooling suit resulted
from a partial pinching of the flexible plastic tube supplying
a coolant to the suit. This gave rise to a cooling reduction,
thermal discomfort of the cosmonaut and increase of humidity
in the spacesuit atmosphere.
RSC Energia technical panel is currently working. Its task
is to make a comprehensive analysis of possible reasons
for this situation and develop adequate actions to exclude
similar situations in the future.
The ISS on-orbit complex of about 181.6 tons (consisting
of Functional Cargo Module Zarya, Service Module Zvezda,
docking compartment-module Pirs, manned spacecraft Soyuz-TMA-3,
logistics vehicle Progress M1-11, modules Unity and Destiny,
airlock Kvest, multi-link truss structure with deployed
solar arrays) continues its operation in a low near-earth
orbit.
The station orbit parameters are as follows: period of revolution
of 91.8 min., inclination of 51.65°, maximum altitude
of 383.6 km, minimum altitude of 361.0 km.
According to the crew and LOCT reports, after completion
of the EVA the crew feels well, and the ISS onboard systems
operate normally.
|
|