  | ||
|
|
USA in Space, 3rd Edition International Space Station: 2004 Date: January 1 to December 31, 2004 Type of Mission: Space station, piloted spaceflight Because the space shuttle fleet remained grounded throughout the year in the wake of the February, 2003, shuttle accident, the International Space Station (ISS) saw no significant construction, and the two-person crews spent most of their time in maintenance, although they did conduct some scientific research. Key Figures C. Michael Foale (b. 1957), English ISS commander for Expedition Eight Alexander Yurevich Kaleri (b. 1956), Russian Expedition Eight flight engineer Gennady Ivanovich Padalka (b. 1958), Russian Air Force colonel and ISS commander for Expedition Nine Edward Michael "Mike" Fincke (b. 1967), U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and Expedition Nine flight engineer André Kuipers, Dutch flight engineer, Visiting Crew 6 Leroy Chiao (b. 1960), American ISS commander for Expedition Ten Salizhan Shakirovich Sharipov (b. 1964), Russian Expedition Ten flight engineer Yuri Georgievich Shargin, Russian Space Forces lieutenant colonel and Visiting Crew 7 flight engineer Summary of the Mission Through 2004, the space shuttle fleet of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) stayed on Earth while a panel investigated the loss of space shuttle Columbia in 2003. This meant that the International Space Station (ISS) lacked its primary personnel and cargo transfer vehicles. The three expeditions at the station were therefore limited to crews of two instead of three, as before the Columbia accident, and no major construction took place. Those crews had to spend an increasing amount of time repairing equipment and depended upon Russian-built Progress automated cargo spacecraft, which were not intended to assume the full resupply burden for their food and water. The crews experienced several trying episodes because of equipment and supply problems, yet they were able to carry out the station's original primary mission to some extent: scientific research. However, even while crew performance exceeded the expectations of NASA and its fifteen partner nations, U.S. long-term space policy began to change in ways that narrowed ISS's mission. Above all else, the ISS crews were to keep the Space Station in good running order and prepare it for the resumption of space shuttle flights in 2005. In addition to routine maintenance chores, there was frequent need for challenging repairs. ISS commander C. Michael Foale of NASA and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri of the Russian Space Agency (RSA), the Expedition Eight crew, began the year nursing a malfunctioning oxygen generator, Elektron, which persisted in being troublesome. It was not approved for around-the-clock use until October, forcing crews to supplement their air supplies from backup oxygen canisters. Problems with the air quality monitoring system also were not solved until October. Early in January, flight controllers had detected a drop in pressure that the crew traced (only after much searching) to a condensation-venting hose for the large viewing window in the Destiny Laboratory Module. Foale and Kaleri noted materials drifting away from the station and strange noises coming from the hull (eventually thought to be from metal sheets flexing in the sunlight). In April, one of the control moment gyroscopes lost power; the gyroscopes are needed to control the direction that the station faces, and one of the four units had already malfunctioned. Not until July 2 was the problem corrected, and the gyroscope returned to operation. The long delay in repairing the gyroscope occurred because of yet another persistent maintenance headache, the crews' space suits. On February 26, Foale and Kaleri had just begun a spacewalk to install equipment that had been brought the month before by a Progress resupply craft, when Kaleri reported a problem with his space suit's environmental system. "I have rain inside my helmet," he told flight controllers in Moscow. Both were ordered back inside after fourteen minutes--a quick end to the first spacewalk to occur without a crew member inside ISS. The Expedition Nine crew--ISS commander Gennady Padalka of RSA and flight engineer Mike Fincke of NASA--had to abort a spacewalk in June after ten minutes when a manual switch for the oxygen system froze in Fincke's space suit. Theirs was the spacewalk to fix the gyroscope, as well as to install new equipment and experiment packages on the hull. Crew members spent long periods troubleshooting space-suit problems, especially the cooling systems, and the American-built space suits eventually were set aside as unusable, leaving only the Russian-built models. Expedition Nine arrived by a Soyuz spacecraft on April 21. With Padalka and Fincke was a temporary crew member, André Kuipers, a Dutch astronaut from the European Space Agency (ESA). He spent nine days aboard ISS conducting research in life sciences and returned to Earth with the Expedition Eight crew. Padalka and Fincke earned much praise from ISS managers during their six-month mission because despite space-suit problems they were able to repair the gyroscope and carry out more scientific work than the scheduled twenty-four projects; the crew often spent their free time on science. Nine's crew also continued the Internet-based "Saturday Morning Science" program for students and spoke to conferences of science teachers. Padalka and Fincke unwittingly created a serious problem for their successors when, in an attempt to vary their diets, they consumed too many rations. Expedition Ten ISS commander Leroy Chiao of NASA and flight engineers Salizhan Sharipov of RSA and Yuri Shargin of the Russian Space Forces docked with ISS on October 16. They narrowly avoided an accident when the autopilot brought the Soyuz spacecraft to the station too fast. A visiting crew member (officially, the sole member of Visiting Crew 7), Shargin completed a program of scientific experiments and then returned to Earth with Expedition Nine eight days later. Chiao and Sharipov looked forward to a busy schedule of spacewalks to prepare for the first ATV and later the return of the shuttles and hoped to work on fourteen science projects. By mid-December, however, they realized that less food was aboard than the inventory system had led them to believe, and no automated Progress spacecraft would bring supplies to make up for the shortfall before the end of December. To make supplies last, they decreased their intake from 3,000 calories to 2,700 calories per day. Undaunted, the pair said that they looked upon the challenge as a kind of camping adventure. Both lost weight waiting for the Progress resupply craft, which arrived on December 26 with 2.5 tons of food, water, and other supplies, including Christmas gifts from their families and a special holiday meal. They spent New Year's Eve at an altitude of 375 kilometers watching fireworks near cities under their orbital path. Contributions Although expedition crews carried out research in some other scientific areas, NASA began to confine ISS science increasingly to those projects that studied some aspect of living and working in space. To improve construction techniques, for example, Expedition Nine experimented with different materials for soldering. Much of the work, however, was devoted to bioastronautics. Crews monitored the effects of radiation and microgravity on their hearts, lungs, and muscles; NASA was particularly interested in the chronic calcium loss from bones that spacefarers experience, which can result in the formation of kidney stones as well as weakening of the skeletal system. The Expedition Nine crew also conducted the first ultrasound body scan in space to practice the technique and determine its accuracy for future use by spacefaring medics. Other scientific work aimed for practical applications. Crews studied the behavior of particles suspended in liquids (colloids) and the formation of bubbles in metals, both to improve materials processing, and they grew yeast cells in culture for possible use in the pharmaceutical industry. The Expedition Ten crew photographed the aftermath of the devastating tsunami of December 26 in the Indian Ocean to identify coastal changes, and all crews sought to inspire future space scientists through programs intended for students and their teachers. Context On January 14, the Bush administration announced a series of new goals in outer space for the United States. NASA was to begin work on returning Americans to the Moon in order to build a base there for a crewed voyage to Mars. As part of the new policy, ISS was to be completed in 2010, at which time the aging space shuttle fleet would be retired. NASA's scientific mission for ISS narrowed to studying the effects of long-duration spaceflight on humans and equipment in preparation for the Mars trip. In order to fund the lunar and Mars expeditions, robotic missions would be curtailed and the Hubble Space Telescope would be permitted to die a fiery death before its work could be completed. NASA's partners in the ISS program--RSA, ESA, Brazil, and Japan--were already displeased with earlier reductions in the station's design and crew and suspected that their principal reason for joining the program, scientific research, would be sacrificed to the new policy. In part to reassure its partners, NASA agreed to increase the crew to six in 2009, using two Soyuz spacecraft as lifeboats, and replace the shuttles with a new Orbital Space Plane able to keep the station supplied and working to its capability. However, the space plane was not yet planned or funded. American critics continued to attack the ISS program because of its cost overruns and modest scientific achievements. The right-wing newspaper The Washington Times, for instance, called ISS a financial black hole. Meanwhile, more than ninety tons of components accumulated at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida awaiting delivery to ISS by space shuttle, including new science and habitat modules. This hardware, built in thirty-seven states and fifteen countries, cost $60 million per year to keep ready for space. See Also Cooperation in Space: U.S. and Russian; Funding Procedures of Space Programs; International Space Station: Crew Return Vehicles; International Space Station: Design and Uses; International Space Station: Living and Working Accommodations; International Space Station: Modules and Nodes; International Space Station: 2003; Materials Processing in Space. Further Reading Bond, Peter. The Continuing Story of the International Space Station. Chichester, England: Springer-Praxis, 2002. Bond describes the development and evolution of space stations, with particular emphasis on the International Space Station, beginning with the revolution that began in 1970, when Salyut 1, the world's first space station, was sent into orbit by the Soviet Union. Harland, David M., and John E. Catchpole. Creating the International Space Station. London: Springer-Verlag London Limited, 2002. A comprehensive review of the historical background, rationale behind, and events leading to the construction and commissioning of the International Space Station. Messerschmid, Ernst, and Reinhold Bertrand. Space Station: Systems and Utilization. Berlin: Springer, 1999. Thorough and technically sophisticated, this volume reviews space station designs in general and that of the International Space Station specifically as it was originally envisioned. It also discusses the science of the subsystems, support vehicles, logistics and communications, the orbital environment, and factors affecting the crews. With photos, graphics, and tables clarifying the text. Oberg, James. Star-Crossed Orbits: Inside the U.S.-Russian Space Alliance. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. A former NASA engineer, Oberg draws on contacts within the agency, and so his unstinting critique of U.S.-Russian misunderstanding and mutual manipulation during construction of the International Space Station has an insider's authority. Zimmerman, Robert. Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2003. This history of space stations concludes with a chapter about the International Space Station. Basing his discussion on interviews with former ISS crew members, the author reviews the difficulties in U.S.-Russian cooperation, the controversy over the station's purpose, and the technical challenges. He suggests that ISS provides training for the expertise needed to send spacecraft to the planets. Roger Smith |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
If you need help with products and ordering, setting up a new account or working with this website, call or email us:
 |
SALEM PRESS, INC. · 131 North El Molino Avenue · Pasadena · CA 91101 © Salem Press, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |