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| The crew of shuttle Atlantis flying STS-106.
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The Countdown is on for Shuttle Atlantis: Preparing for Life in Space, STS-106
By Todd Halvorson
Cape Canaveral Bureau Chief
posted: 07:00 am ET
05 September 2000
ET
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The foundation is laid, and the roof has been raised. Now the plumbers, electricians and cable guys are on their way. Jam-packed like a moving van, shuttle Atlantis - along with a crew of American and Russian craftsmen - will truck up to the vacant International Space Station this week after a scheduled launch Friday from NASAs Kennedy Space Center. The job at hand: Setting up house for the first full-time tenants of the outpost, who plan to take up residency at the station in early November. Long-awaited Russian living quarters finally are in place, so the Atlantis crew aims to wire the new wing for electricity, work on the air conditioning, install a high-tech toilet and stock both the pantry and cloths bins. "Its like building a house. The framers have come, and the roof is on, but its not wired and all the toilets arent installed yet," Atlantis pilot Scott Altman said in an interview with SPACE.com. "The plumbing hasnt been done and the cable TV isnt run. Were going to put those systems in and get (the station) ready so when the first folks show up, they can open the door to their new house and have a great place to live in," he said. 
"I think that's the main job for the first expedition -- making sure everything we put on board is functional and working the way that we want it to work."
They, in this case, are U.S. astronaut William Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts: Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. Known as the Expedition One crew, the trio is scheduled to launch October 30 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and then dock at the station two days later. Theyll spend about four months at the station, testing outpost systems. "You might call it a shake-down cruise," said Shepherd, a former U.S. Navy SEAL whose friends simply call him "Shep." "I think thats the main job for the first expedition - making sure everything we put on board is functional and working the way that we want it to work." First up, however, will be the advance team aboard Atlantis. Made up of five American astronauts and two Russian cosmonauts, the crew is scheduled to set sail for the station about 8:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (1245 GMT) Friday. ~The 99th shuttle liftoff will be precisely timed to put Atlantis on course for a rendezvous and docking at the station early Sunday morning.
NASA artwork of what the ISS looked like at the end of July after the Zvezda service module docked. A Russian Progress supply ship has since docked to the far end of Zvezda. NASA Image.
| Work at the outpost is expected to begin in earnest a day later when astronaut Ed Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko head outside to hook up television and electrical cables between the new crew quarters and the rest of the complex. Clad in cumbersome spacesuits, the spacewalking electricians - who also are trained as space station TV technicians - will have to scale the towering outpost in order to do the job. Their ultimate destination: A work site way up near the top of the station, some 110 feet (33 meters) above their mothership and safety -- or further than any tethered shuttle spacewalker has ventured to date. "We actually have to crawl all the way up the space station - hand over hand," Lu said. "Just like a mountain climber would do." Added NASA spacewalk project engineer Mike Hess: "Itll be the equivalent of working on about the 11th story of a 13-story building." Moving days in space What follows will be five days of hard labor that could be appreciated by any jack-of-all-trades. Like a high-flying moving company, the crew will unpack a shuttle cargo bay shipping container and a Russian space freighter now docked to the end of the outpost. All tolled, more than three tons of supplies and equipment - including crucial space station life support systems - will be unloaded and either set up or stowed aboard the outpost for Shepherd and his two cosmonaut colleagues. The supplies include some 850 pounds (382.5 kilograms) of food as well as drinking water, comfortable cloths, toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo, soap and stuff for a home office - laptop computers, pens, pencils, Post-It notes, scissors, tape and binders. The equipment includes a crucial oxygen generator, a carbon dioxide scrubber, an exercise treadmill, tools and heavy-duty batteries that will be used to power station systems when the outpost is flying on the dark side of Earth. Astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Dan Burbank will act as loadmaster and stowmaster, respectively, orchestrating the unloading and stowage work. Lu, Malenchenko and cosmonaut Boris Morukov will take the lead setting up crucial station systems - like the toilet, for instance. ~Now packed away in the Progress space freighter, the commode is a carbon copy of one in the core lab of Russias space station Mir. The Atlantis crew will install it in the new Russian crew quarters along with a sewage treatment tank and all the associated plumbing. No leak check is scheduled.
Atlantis astronauts arrive in Florida on Monday as thunderstorms light up the sky to north. Learn more about the crew. Image from NASA TV.
| "Right now were not planning on verifying functionality," Altman said with a smile. "Were getting it all ready for Bill Shepherd to get in there and do the final checkout." Bringing it home Atlantis and its crew are scheduled to pull out of the station around 11 p.m. EDT September 16 (September 17, 0300 GMT). Armed with still and video cameras, theyll shoot pictures of the station and its new crew quarters before heading off on a two-day trip back to Earth. A predawn touchdown is scheduled September 19 at KSCs three-mile shuttle runway, and when the astronauts reach terra firma, they want to be able to say the fledgling station at long last is ready for occupancy. "Once we leave, then ideally Shep and his crewmates will be able to come and move right in," said shuttle skipper Terry Wilcutt. "Well even unpack their bedrooms so that once they get there, they can go right to work. I want them to be able to go right to their quarters, hang family pictures and make it their little home - their nest - as soon as they get there, so theyll be as comfortable as they can be."
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