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Go Endeavour!
Expedition 4 Blasts Off to Alpha
5 12 01
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(Back
row)
The Space Shuttle Endeavour crew: Mission Specialist Daniel
M. Tani, Mission Specialist Linda M. Godwin, Commander Dominic
L. Gorie and Pilot Mark E. Kelly. (From left, lower left
group)
The Expedition Four crew: Flight Engineer Daniel W. Bursch,
Commander Yuri Onufrienko and Flight Engineer Carl E. Walz. (From left, lower right
group) The Expedition Three crew: Flight
Engineer Mikhail Tyurin, Commander Frank Culbertson and Flight
Engineer Vladimir Dezhurov.
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The STS-108 mission will take the
Expedition 4 crew to the Space Station and deliver a series of new
experiments, winding up a record- breaking year of missions that
completed the first phase of the Station's orbital assembly and kicked
off its first science activities.
Endeavour is
commanded by Dom
Gorie. Pilot is Mark Kelly and Mission Specialists
are Linda Godwin and Dan Tani. On
board with them will be several thousand US flags to honor those killed in the
September 11th terror attacks.
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Dom Gorrie |
Mark Kelly |
Linda Godwin |
Dan Tani |
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- A University of Colorado experiment
will ride into orbit on the shuttle to explore gentle collisions
between particles of space dust, a fundamental process in the
formation of Planets and the evolution of Planetary Ring
Systems.
Collide-2 (Collisions Into Dust Experiment Two) is part of the MACH-1
payload on board Endeavour. The Raffaello
Multi-Purpose Logistics Module also makes a
return visit to the station.
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The Raffaello Module is used to transport
cargo to & from the ISS |
The main purpose of the mission is
to take the Expedition Four crew, Cosmonaut Commander Yuri
Onufrienko, Flight Engineer Dan Bursch and Flight Engineer
Carl
Walz,
to the station and then return to Earth Dec.16th with current
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Yuri Onufrienko |
Dan Burch |
Carl Walz |
Commander, Frank Culbertson and his two Cosmonaut colleagues,
Vladimir Dezhurov
and Mikhail
Turin, who have been in space since August this year.
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Frank Culbertson |
Vladimir Dezhurov |
Mikhail Turin |
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The
fourth full-time crew of the station will face five-and-a-half-months
of work that will require the skills of Construction and Maintenance
Workers as well as Computer Specialists and Scientific Researchers.
During their expedition
they will oversee the delivery and installation of the central segment
of Alpha's metallic backbone, a girder-like truss that eventually will
stretch 356 feet (108 meters) from tip to tip.
| The S-0 Truss is the first of a
series that will become the backbone of the Station |
| The upright P6 Truss &
Panels will be moved to a vertical position joining the truss |
They will conduct or
support as many as eight spacewalks, six of which might be needed to
install the so-called S-0 truss segment and prepare the station for
the arrival of two more metal girders in late 2002.
Two other sorties will
involve repositioning a Russian construction crane, installing
protective deflector shields around station jet thrusters and setting
up ham radio antennas outside the outpost's Russian-built crew
quarters.
Also on the crew's
to-do list:- Outfitting the station's prime U.S. command and control
computers with new solid state memory units that will replace hard
drives…proven to be prone to failure, playing host to two visiting
Shuttle crews and a Russian Soyuz taxi crew…. and preparing for the
arrival of two supply-filled Russian Progress space freighters..
What's more, the crew,
all veteran space fliers, aim to carry out the most varied set of
scientific investigations ever attempted aboard the station. To that
end, the trio plans to devote almost 400 hours to carrying out 65 U.S.
and Russian experiments in a wide range of scientific disciplines,
including biology, medicine, physics and research that could lead to
the production of new drugs to fight human disease.
"It's almost like
being a jack-of-all-trades," said veteran NASA astronaut Daniel
Bursch, 44, who will serve as a flight engineer aboard the outpost.
"I mean, there
will be some days where I will be a scientist," he said.
"And then the next day I may be repairing a box that breaks on
the space station, that needs to be repaired... So it'll be a little
bit of everything."
Also during this flight, Linda
Godwin and Dan Tani will conduct EVA's to install thermal blankets
over the station’s beta gimbal assemblies of the orbiting laboratory’s
solar wings, which stretch 240 feet from tip to tip.
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| Working on he massive Solar
Panels array will give the EVA Astronauts a |
| Breathtaking view. |
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These assemblies
let the wings track the Sun to provide maximum power. Flight
controllers at Houston’s Mission Control Center have noted
occasional & unexpected surges in the power required to turn the
wings.
They believe the surges are related
to the extreme temperature changes that occur as the station moves in
and out of direct sunlight. The Installation of the blankets is
expected to reduce the temperature fluctuations and eliminate the
"power spikes" seen as the wings pivot.
Godwin & Tani will leave
Endeavour's airlock, then get a 50-foot lift from the shuttle’s
robotic arm. They will have to climb with the blankets another 30 feet
to the worksite, atop the P6 Truss and about 80 feet from Endeavour’s
cargo bay.
Meanwhile,
Expedition Three Commander Frank Culbertson, Pilot Vladimir Dezhurov
and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin were still busy in the latter days
of their mission. They activated the Progress unpiloted supply vehicle
which was attached to the docking port at the rear of the Zvezda
service module, in preparation for its undocking.
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Progress Cargo Ship Launch & Undock |
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The Progress undocking made room for
the replacement Progress M1-7 cargo spaceship that was launched from
the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:24 p.m. CST Monday. The
ship delivered some 2.4 tonnes of cargo, including fuel, oxygen and
food for the space station team. It docked with the station at 1940
GMT Wednesday as planned but a problem with the locking latch of the
docking mechanism has caused Mission Control concern. A decision was
taken to postpone the launch of Endeavour to allow investigations.
Russian Cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov
and Mikhail Tyurin spent 2.5 hours walking in space Monday morning to
help fix the improperly docked Progress cargo ship. The pair exited
the International Space Station at 1320 GMT (8:20am EST) and found
that it was a defective rubberized o-ring seal that was stopping the
Progress from making a "hard dock" with the station.
Their successful repair allowed Mission Control to restart the
countdown for Tuesday's launch
The Expedition Three trio are
continuing their preparations for their return home after almost four
months in Space. They have packed up gear and readied station
equipment in anticipation of the arrival of Endeavour.
The Expedition Four
crew are scheduled to return to Earth on May 12th 2002,
again on board the Shuttle Endeavour. The Expedition 3 crew will
return with STS 108 on December 17th 2001.
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The Eyes wish success to all on
Alpha & the Shuttle.
We will give regular updates
throughout the mission.
Thanks to
Todd
Halvorson, SPACE.COM,
SPACE REF, &
Universe Today
for report information.
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