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Space station update NASA NEWS RELEASE Posted: November 10, 2005 With their first spacewalk behind them, the crew of the International Space Station pressed ahead this week to prepare for several upcoming milestones. Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev get a special musical wakeup call this weekend as Paul McCartney connects with them live from a concert in Anaheim, Calif. The call will take place at 12:55 a.m. EST Sunday and will be broadcast live on NASA Television and www.nasa.gov. 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 today, 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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This week marks the anniversary of arguably the most daring and complex space shuttle mission. The astronauts successfully launched two satellites and then recovered two others during extraordinary spacewalks by astronauts using jet-propelled backpacks and pure muscle power.
Commander Bill McArthur and flight engineer Valery Tokarev conduct a 5 1/2-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station, installing a TV camera, doing repair chores and jettisoning a failed science probe.
Return to flight space shuttle commander Eileen Collins narrates an interesting slide show featuring some favorite photographs of Earth taken during her previous shuttle missions.