CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Sixty-five days and all's well aboard the International Space Station (ISS) today.
That's how long the current crew of Valery Korzun, Sergei Treschev and Peggy Whitson have been aboard the outpost since taking up residence in June after taking the trip from Earth aboard shuttle Endeavour.
Officials took time this week to praise the efforts of the Expedition Five mission.
"All is going very well on board the space station," ISS flight director John Curry said Thursday. "They are enjoying life on orbit and that's critical when you're talking about long-duration spaceflight."
Program managers say the crew is spending an average of 17 hours a week on science operations and have completed 19 of the 62 operational tasks planned before Atlantis is scheduled to arrive at the station in early October.
Among the key tasks recently has been work with the station's Canadian robot arm, which Curry says has performed flawlessly and is ready to support additional station assembly work planned during the next two shuttle missions.
Canadarm2 is now attached to a platform on a railroad-like car that allows the arm to be moved along a track on the station's main truss. It was "walked off" its attachment on the Destiny science module to the Mobile Base System on July 10.
The main focus for the expedition crew during the next two weeks is to conduct a pair of spacewalks outside the Russian portions of the growing multinational complex.
Korzun and Whitson are to don Russian Orlan spacesuits on Aug. 16 and work outside for about six hours. They are to install six debris shields on the exterior of the Zvezda service module, replace some experiments and then use a pair of large homemade "Q-tips" to dust some metal near a thruster to see what kind of residue from the jet is there.
A week later, on Aug. 23, Korzun and Treschev are to head outside for another six-hour spacewalk to replace some experiments, inspect certain areas of the station and install a pair of amateur radio antennas.
Technically, Curry said, the station is working well with only a pair of minor problems to occupy flight controllers' attention.
One problem is with a bearing inside the treadmill, which has prevented the crew from using the device for exercise the past couple of weeks. Curry said controllers think they have a way to work around the problem and allow the crew to resume running on the treadmill as early as Friday.
The second problem involves the Russian Elektron system used to generate oxygen for the outpost. The primary system is working normally while part of the back up system is not. Curry stressed that the crew is not in any danger from the problem, which is not considered serious.
There is enough oxygen available from a variety of other sources to last the crew for several months.
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