Two
astronauts finished their second week in charge of the International Space
Station (ISS) Friday while preparing to conduct orbital repairs and their
mission's first spacewalk.
ISS Expedition
12 commander Bill McArthur and flight engineer Valery Tokarev are now well
into their six-month mission aboard the space station, though time seems to
have flown for the veteran astronauts.
"It's hard
to believe that 20 days have already passed," McArthur told students in Germany
Thursday during a question and answer session from space. "It seems like such a
short time for us."
McArthur
and Tokarev launched
into space late Sept. 30 EDT and docked
at the ISS on Oct. 3 with U.S. space tourist Gregory
Olsen. They took command of the orbital laboratory late Oct. 10, after the
station's previous crew - Expedition
11 commander Sergei Krikalev and flight engineer John Phillips - left
the ISS with Olsen.
Tokarev
said that despite spending three weeks in Earth orbit, he does not yet feel
nostalgic for his terrestrial stomping grounds.
"In a
couple or three months I'll tell you what I'm missing," he told the students.
The
Expedition 12 crew spent this week going over plans for their first spacewalk,
a Nov. 7 extravehicular activity (EVA) to be performed in U.S.-built
spacesuits, performing a kidney stone experiment and working with station's new
Pulmonary Function System, which analyzes exhaled gases aboard the ISS.
On Friday,
the two astronauts briefly reactivated the space station's Elektron oxygen
generator - which switched off last week due to a low water supply - before it
shut down once more. Additional trouble shooting is slated for Saturday, NASA
officials said, adding that Russian flight controllers also plan to test the
engines of an unmanned Progress 19 on Wednesday following a failed
reboost maneuver earlier this week.
But both
astronauts are looking forward to the upcoming spacewalk, which will be the first
ISS EVA to be performed in U.S. space suits since Expedition 6
in 2003.
"It looks
like we'll get to do the first two-person EVA in the U.S. suits on the U.S.
segment since we've gone a two person crew," McArthur told SPACE.com
during a space-to-ground interview earlier this month. "We think that will be a
big challenge for us."
ISS crews
have been limited to two astronauts, rather than the typical three, since the
NASA's Columbia shuttle accident. Since then, the two-astronaut crews have left
the ISS empty during spacewalks, but have relied on Russian Orlan spacesuits.
An
astronaut's final flight
Hailing
from Wakulla, North Carolina, the 54-year-old McArthur is a veteran three past
shuttle flights and visited both Russia's Mir space station and the ISS during
his astronaut career. But Expedition 12, his first long-duration mission, will
likely be the icing on the cake.
"I
anticipate that this will be the last flight of my astronaut career," McArthur,
a retired U.S. Army colonel, told reporters before launching into orbit. "My previous
experiences seemed like vacations in space, or visits to space, and I always
wanted the opportunity to live in space."
Before his
flight, McArthur told SPACE.com that it was one night in October 2000, while
he slept in an ISS node during NASA's STS-92
shuttle flight, that he decided to shift toward a space station mission.
"It just
dawned on me that, more and more, this was something that would be like the
next step," said McArthur, whose wife and two daughters watched him launch
toward the ISS form Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
McArthur
had hoped that he and Tokarev would join European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter
aboard the ISS for Expedition 12. But Reiter's shuttle flight, STS-121, has
been delayed until at least May
2006 as NASA works through ongoing foam debris and hurricane recovery
efforts.
"It's hard
to convey how much more effective the crew is when we have a few more people,"
McArthur told SPACE.com from orbit on Oct. 6. "We are disappointed not
to have a third crewmember."
But
McArthur, who also serves as NASA's Science Officer for Expedition 12, said
that the need to explore space is a fundamental part of the human spirit.
"I've
always been interested in things that leave the surface of the Earth," he said
in a preflight interview. "There is no arena in which we challenge our
technical ability greater than when we send people into space."
From
horses to orbit
Tokarev,
52, is also flying his first long-duration spaceflight with Expedition 12, though
life in Earth orbit was not always his goal.
A veteran cosmonaut
with Russia's Federal Space Agency, Tokarev initially planned to be a fighter
pilot - which seemed almost unattainable during his youth in the village of
Kap-Yar in the country's Astrakhan Region.
"When I
grew up in my small village, I couldn't ever imagine what it meant to be a
cosmonaut," Tokarev, also a father of two, told SPACE.com in a preflight
interview. "It was just so far from our reality."
But the
local library was much closer. Tokarev pored through books of World War 2
fighter pilots and ultimately rose to the rank of colonel in the Russian Air
Force. In the mid-1980s, Russia began its Buran
shuttle program and Tokarev reported to become a test cosmonaut.
"I was
interested in how to fly out of the atmosphere," Tokarev said, though he would
have to wait until 1999 to reach orbit, and then aboard NASA's Discovery
shuttle as a member of the STS-96 crew.
Tokarev
spent 10 days in space during that flight to the ISS, then returned to Earth to
prepare for his next mission.
"Every time
you look at the Earth, at our planet, your memory reminds you of some situation
with your family or friends," Tokarev said, adding that despite reaching into
low-Earth orbit, never forgets his home planet. "So we stay on orbit, but we
grew up on Earth."
Tokarev
will perform the first spacewalks of his cosmonaut career - McArthur has two
under his belt from STS-92 - during Expedition 12, and will celebrate his 53rd
birthday in space on Oct. 29. The space station, he said, is just one in a
series of steps into space for humans, with the Moon as the next logical
choice.
"It's probably
just an initial step," he told students Thursday. "But it's not so easy to do
it."
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