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Expedition 12 Prepare For Monday Morning Spacewalk
The Expedition 12 crew prepared for the mission's first spacewalk and kept the station ship-shape last week. Station Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev reviewed procedures and prepared tools for the spacewalk, which starts at 9:30 a.m. EST, Monday. Coverage on NASA TV begins at 8:30 a.m. EST. The spacewalk is the first using U.S. spacesuits since 2003. During the 5.5 hour spacewalk, the crew will install a TV camera on the station's port truss. The camera will be an important aid during future assembly work. The crew also will remove an old experiment from the top of the P6 truss, the station's highest point. The experiment measured the electrical environment around the station. The station passed the milestone of five years of human presence aboard the complex. The first station crew, Commander Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko, arrived at the complex on Nov. 2, 2000. The crew also focused on hardware maintenance. Last Monday they disassembled and measured air flow in the Trace Contaminant Control System. It keeps a clean, healthy atmosphere by filtering out contaminants in the air. Engineers noticed a reduction in the air flow, and after the crew examined its components, determined that replacement hardware may need to be delivered on a future supply ship. After reassembling the device, the system is running at a slightly reduced capacity, complemented by a fully operational and complementary system in the Russian segment. The crew also replaced a faulty pump in a thermal control loop and smoke detectors in the Zvezda Service Module and cleaned ventilation filters in the Zarya module. Related Links ISS at NASA SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express
Paris (ESA) Nov 03, 2005Just over five years ago the Soyuz TM-31 spacecraft was launched into orbit. There had been 30 previous launches of the Soyuz-TM spacecraft, all of which went to the Mir Space Station. This flight however was a landmark in spaceflight history as it carried the first Expedition Crew to the International Space Station where it arrived and docked two days later. |
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