Space Station 20th: Expedition 1 One Month Away!
Expedition 1 crew nears the end of training; Shuttle crews prepare for ISS assembly
With just one month to go before their historic launch as the first crew to live and work aboard the International Space Station (ISS), the Expedition 1 crew members and their backups neared the end of their preflight training in Russia. Commander William M. Shepherd, Flight Engineer Sergei K. Krikalev, and Soyuz Commander Yuri P. Gidzenko, as well as backups Kenneth D. Bowersox, Mikhail V. Tyurin, and Vladimir N. Dezhurov, completed several final simulations. At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, workers prepared Space Shuttle Discovery and its cargo element for an October assembly flight while the mission’s seven-member crew participated in a countdown dress rehearsal. The Joint Airlock Module, added to station in 2001 to provide it with an autonomous spacewalking capability, arrived at Kennedy for preflight processing.
Left: Expedition 1 crew members in front of the Zarya module trainer at GCTC in Star City. Image courtesy Debbie Trainor. Right: Final familiarization with the PK-3 instrument in Moscow with Bill Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko, Academician Vladimir Fortov, and Sergei Krikalev. Photo courtesy Institute of High-Energy Densities, Russian Academy of Sciences.
At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC) in Star City outside Moscow, the Expedition 1 crew members completed some of their final training sessions and took their exams on various Soyuz spacecraft and ISS Russian Segment systems. They completed their final spacewalking practice sessions in the GCTC Hydrolab training pool, culminating with an all-day simulation of Russian Segment activities on Sept. 30 and integrated simulations in early October.
On Sept. 11, as part of their science program training, Shepherd, Gidzenko, and Krikalev completed their final familiarization with the Plasma Kristall-3 (PK-3) experiment at the Institute of High-Energy Densities (IHED) at the Russian Academy of Sciences. The joint German-Russian investigation, led by Academician Vladimir Fortov of IHED, sought to study the formation and behavior of plasma and dust crystals in microgravity. The experiment launched to ISS on the Progress M-44 cargo vehicle on Feb. 26, 2001. The crew installed it in the Zvezda module’s transfer compartment, where Krikalev conducted the first experiment session on March 2.
After completing training, the crew earned a well-deserved preflight vacation the week of Oct. 10, prior to fulfilling ceremonial prelaunch activities in Moscow and then flying to Baikonur to conduct fit checks with their spacecraft.
Left: Space Shuttle Discovery rolls out to Launch Pad 39A. Middle: Workers prepare the Z1 truss for transfer to the launch pad. Right: The STS-92 crew of Brian Duffy, left, Pamela Melroy, Leroy Chiao, William McArthur, Jeff Wisoff, Michael Lopez-Alegria, and Koichi Wakata at Kennedy for the TCDT. Credits: NASA
On Sept. 10, workers rolled Space Shuttle Discovery from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39A in preparation for the STS-92 assembly flight. The crew of Commander Brian Duffy, Pilot Pamela A. Melroy, and Mission Specialists Leroy Chiao, William S. McArthur, Peter J. “Jeff” Wisoff, Michael E. Lopez-Alegria, and Koichi Wakata travelled to Kennedy on Sept. 13 to participate the next day in the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test (TCDT), a final dress rehearsal for the October launch. During their mission, the astronauts installed the Z1 Truss onto the zenith port of the Unity Node 1 module and Pressurized Mating Adapator-3 onto its nadir port during four spacewalks. STS-92 was the last shuttle flight to dock with an uncrewed space station.
Left: Workers remove the Joint Airlock Module from the Super Guppy transport aircraft at Kennedy. The Joint Airlock Module in the vacuum chamber for pressure integrity testing. Right: Workers prepare the Joint Airlock Module for loading into the payload canister. Credits: NASA
The Joint Airlock Module, then scheduled for launch in May 2001, arrived at Kennedy on Sept. 11, 2000, transported from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, by NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft. The module provides crew members with an independent means of conducting spacewalks from station without relying on a docked space shuttle. After its arrival at Kennedy, workers delivered the airlock to the Operations and Checkout Building for vacuum chamber testing. Following successful completion of the vacuum test, workers moved the airlock to the Space Station Processing Facility for further prelaunch preparation and checkout. Manufactured by The Boeing Co., the massive, spindle-shaped airlock is 20 feet long, has a diameter of 13 feet and weighs six-and-a-half tons.
To be continued …