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In Space You Really Can Hear Paul Sing

Paul McCartney pays tribute to the crew of STS-114 during a concert in his current tour. Image credit: NASA.
Houston TX (SPX) Nov 14, 2005
With their first spacewalk behind them, the crew of the International Space Station pressed ahead last week to prepare for several upcoming milestones.

Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev got a special musical wakeup call this weekend when Paul McCartney connected with them live from a concert in Anaheim, Calif. The call took place at 12:55 a.m. EST Sunday and was broadcast live on NASA Television.

McArthur and Tokarev spent the week servicing the spacesuits used Monday for a 5 hour, 22 minute excursion outside the station. During the spacewalk, they installed a television camera, jettisoned an inactive science experiment and removed and replaced other equipment on the truss system of the complex.

The crew's second spacewalk is planned for Dec. 7. McArthur and Tokarev will don Russian Orlan spacesuits and exit the Pirs Docking Compartment airlock for that excursion.

During the spacewalk, they will move a cargo crane adapter, collect science experiments from the hull of the Zvezda Service Module and manually launch an expired Russian spacesuit equipped with amateur radio equipment.

Called SuitSat, the experiment is designed to see if ham radio contacts can be made with a free-flying transmitter.

To prepare for the spacewalk, McArthur and Tokarev will relocate their Soyuz spacecraft from the Pirs docking port to the nadir docking port of the Zarya module on Nov. 18, briefly leaving the station unoccupied.

Earlier Friday, four thruster engines on the Progress cargo spacecraft were fired for more than 33 minutes in two separate reboost maneuvers to raise the altitude of the outpost. The station is now in a near circular orbit of 219 miles to accommodate the launch and docking of the next resupply ship in December. The reboost was the longest ever completed using Progress engines.

On Wednesday, Tokarev replaced a control panel for the station's toilet in Zvezda that had malfunctioned earlier in the week. The temporary loss of the use of the device's liquid disposal component had no impact on station operations. Following the troubleshooting, the toilet is now operating normally.

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International Space Station Orbit Corrected
Moscow (SPX) Nov 11, 2005
Russia's Mission Control Center said Thursday it had successfully completed the correction of the International Space Station's orbit, raising it eight kilometers (4.97 miles), reports RIA Novosti.



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