STS-86 Day 5 Highlights
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- On Monday, September 29, 1997, 8:00 a.m. CDT, STS-86 MCC Status Report # 8
reports:
- A full day of transfer activities is planned for the joint
Atlantis/Mir crew members as they move into their second full day of
docked operations.
- Experiment hardware, logistical supplies and water continue to be
moved between the two vehicles as the astronauts and cosmonauts work
side by side. Mir 24 crew member Dave Wolf also is receiving daily
briefings from Mike Foale who concluded his 134-day visit to Mir on
Sunday morning. Foale is acquainting Wolf with the the Mir station,
which will be his home for the next four months.
- Yesterday, Commander Jim Wetherbee and Pilot Mike Bloomfield fired
small thrusters on Atlantis to provide data for the Mir Structural
Dynamics Experiment (MiSDE), which measures the structural reaction of
station components and solar arrays. The data will be used for
structural analyses for the International Space Station. U.S. and
Russian managers will review the data in a regularly-scheduled
teleconference on Tuesday. In the meantime, a secondary test,
DTO-259, the tuned notch filter test, was canceled.
- U.S. and Russian flight controllers continue to discuss whether to
install the new main computer in Mir as early as Wednesday. Atlantis
would provide attitude control for the combined spacecraft during the
replacement procedure. Also on Wednesday, Scott Parazynski and
Vladimir Titov will conduct a spacewalk outside Atlantis/Mir,
retrieving four experiment packages mounted by astronauts Linda Godwin
and Rich Clifford during STS-76 in March 1996.
- On Monday, September 29, 1997, 9:15 p.m. CDT, STS-86 MCC Status Report # 9
reports:
- The ten astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the Atlantis-Mir space
complex continued their transfer activities today, moving more
logistical supplies and water to the Russian outpost as U.S. astronaut
Dave Wolf settled in for his four-month mission on the space station.
- Wolf spent part of the day conducting experiments with a biomedical
device on the Mir designed to cultivate cell tissue in the absence of
gravity. Having set up his living quarters in the Mir's Kvant-2
module, Wolf also had a chance to spend time with astronaut Mike
Foale, his U.S. predecessor on the Mir, as Foale helped familiarize
Wolf with his new orbital home.
- Foale worked with Mir Flight Engineer Pavel Vinogradov to complete
the cultivation of plants in the Mir's Greenhouse experiment which has
studied plant growth in the absence of gravity during Foale's tenure
on the Russian station.
- Mission Specialists Vladimir Titov and Scott Parazynski joined
Vinogradov and Mir 24 Commander Anatoly Solovyev in the continuing
transfer of water and logistical supplies to the Mir for use over the
next several months. As the two crews began their workday,
approximately half of all of the items earmarked for transfer between
both vehicles had already been moved to their respective locations.
- U.S. and Russian flight controllers spent time today discussing the
techniques and timelines which will be used for the installation of
the new central computer for the Mir which was transferred from
Atlantis Commander Jim Wetherbee to Solovyev Saturday at the time of
hatch opening. Pending final approval Tuesday morning, the computer is
expected to be installed in the Mir Wednesday prior to the start of a
five-hour spacewalk in Atlantis' cargo bay by Titov and Parazynski. It
could take most of the day for software to be reloaded in the new
computer, but no Mir systems performance should be affected since
Atlantis will maintain the correct orientation to the sun for the
Russian station for electrical production through its solar arrays.
- Once the Mir's new computer is back on line, the station's gyrodynes
can once again be spun up to provide automatic attitude
control. Atlantis is scheduled to undock from the Mir Friday morning
at the conclusion of six days of joint operations.
- The Atlantis-Mir space complex is orbiting the Earth at an altitude
of about 215 nautical miles with both spacecraft's systems operating
in excellent shape.
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