We are go for the crew exchange and go to continue flying the space station, said William Gerstenmaier, NASA ISS program manager, during a series of April 9th briefings on the space station, its current Expedition 8 crew and Expedition 9.
Padalka will serve as commander of both Expedition 9 and the Soyuz trip to the ISS while Fincke, a space rookie, will serve as flight engineer and the NASA science officer during the mission. Andre Kuipers, an European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut from the Netherlands, will ride to the ISS with them for a short-term science stay.
The Expedition 9 crew will replace astronaut Michael Foale and cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri of Expedition 8, who have served aboard the ISS since October 2003.
Gerstenmaier said there are some concerns for the upcoming station crew, including issues over water and spare parts. Water is always a critical commodity aboard the station, especially since it and other large payloads were traditionally delivered to the station via NASAs space shuttle, which has been grounded since the loss of Columbia Feb. 1, 2003.
Things are pretty tight from a consumables perspective, but we are used to them being tight, Gerstenmaier said. This year hasnt been easy for us flying.
The station is fine on food for the remainder of Expedition 8 and the planned six-month run for Expedition 9. Foale and Kaleri did use the last spare Elektron device, a Russian component that separates oxygen and hydrogen from water, to repair a faulty unit recently, and additional spare parts are anticipated in upcoming resupply missions.
The next expedition
It will actually be April 19 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan (but April 18 for station officials EDT) when Padalka, Fincke and Kuipers ride a Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft to the ISS.
The trio should dock with the space station early on April 21 (EDT) and go through a nine-day crew exchange, with Expedition 8s Foale and Kaleri returning to Earth with Kuipers on April 29 (EDT).
This will be our third two-person crew aboard the space station, said Matt Abbott, Expedition 9 lead flight director. Weve really evolved into a mode of operation with these smaller crews.
Typical ISS crews consisted of three astronauts, a number pared down to two to conserve station resources like water, food and air in the absence of shuttle resupply flights. Two Russian vehicles, Progress 14 and Progress 15, are scheduled to deliver cargo to the ISS during Expedition 9.
The Expedition 9 crew will conduct two spacewalks, one on July 22 and another on August 24, to install handrails on the outer ISS surface and prepare the station to receive ESAs Autonomous Transfer Vehicle (ATV) by 2005. The spacewalks may also include tasks left uncompleted during a recent Expedition 8 extravehicular activity, which was cut short due to a malfunction in Kaleris spacesuit.
Scientific goals
While much of their time will be spent keeping the ISS operational, Padalka and Fincke have about 200 hours worth of science activities planned for their stay, including the use of an advanced diagnostic ultrasounds device that will scientists an idea of how internal organs shift in the human body in the absence Earth gravity.
The goal is to document what these ultrasound scans look like in orbit, as well what a normal healthy human looks like in orbit, said Janice Voss, Expedition 9s increment scientist.
That data, as well as others from a study on the effects of radiation on human chromosomes and on the effects of muscle loss from long-duration spaceflight, could be valuable for future manned missions to other planets. Though all were planned well before President George W. Bush announced his new space vision to send humans back to the moon and Mars, Voss said.
A better handle on repairs
ISS managers said the Expedition 8 crews experiences over the last six months have better equipped engineers to develop procedures for in-flight station repairs by astronauts aboard longer ISS missions, as well as future trips to the moon and Mars.
During their tenure aboard the ISS, Foale and Kaleri not only performed preventative maintenance on the station, but fixed the faulty Elektron unit, tracked down and patched an air leak in one of the windows and replaced a faulty bearing in an exercise treadmill vital for keeping their strength up in zero gravity. That last task, station managers said, was something typically handled on the ground by engineers trained to repair the instrument.
The [Expedition 8] crew had never trained on this hardware before, Gerstenmaier said. Were learning to operate and work better in space.
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