Posting this here since it's more relevant to STS-134 operations than it is to ISS/Expedition 28. A nice update on STS-134 science payloads was given in today's Weekly Science Update.
From ISS On-Orbit Status Report for 28/05/2011.
In a somewhat unusual twist of timelines, Shuttle crewmembers MS-4 Greg "Taz" Chamitoff & MS-1 Mike "Spanky" Fincke performed major IFM (Inflight Maintenance) in the ISS by working in Node 3 on restoring the CDRA (Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly) to full service. [After FE-3 Ron Garan had removed the failed Desiccant/Sorbent Bed 2 from the rear of the CDRA rack at Bay Aft 4 on 24/05, Spanky & Taz had a hard time today completing the installation of the new Bed 201 frame delivered on STS-134/ULF-6 due to fit check problems. The installation took longer than anticipated but was completed. Work continues and is expected to be finished to allow the Shuttle reboost and undocking remain on schedule as planned. Interesting: a Shuttle crew doing an ISS installation of a Russian component.
Oxygen Transfer Update:
The planned O2 transfer was completed using the backup hose with no issues, with about 10 lbs of O2 transferred from the Shuttle to the A/L (Airlock) tanks. Teardown of the transfer equipment will be completed tomorrow by Ron Garan & Mark Kelly.
Reboost Update:
The ISS reboost by Shuttle pilot Greg Johnson using the VCRS (Vernier Reaction Control System, Config. 3/Auto Reboost) is scheduled for early tomorrow morning at ~5:01 AM GMT.
Weekly Science Update (Expedition Twenty-Seven/Twenty-Eight -- Week 10)
AMS-02 (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer): Each day, AMS continues to collect about 100 Gigabytes of data from 40 million cosmic rays. All nominal except for 23/05, when we needed to reboot via the AMS Laptop. Many thanks to the STS-134 crew for the early HCOR RPCM R&R as we were completely blind during the outage.
MISSE-7 (Materials ISS Experiment 7): The 7th Materials on International Space Station Experiment (MISSE-7) reached a successful mission completion on 10/05. During EVA-1, PEC 7A and PEC 7B were retrieved and transferred to the STS-134 Shuttle payload bay for return to Earth. MISSE-7 was launched to the ISS aboard the STS-129 Shuttle mission in November 2009, and operated continuously since that time. During its 1.5 year on-orbit mission, MISSE-7 tested a variety of next-generation solar cells and electronic devices and provided real-time downlink of science data. MISSE-7 also continuously exposed cutting-edge material samples that will be analyzed in ground laboratories to determine how well they survived the space exposure effects of atomic oxygen, ultraviolet exposure, particle irradiation, and extreme temperature cycles.
MISSE-8 (Materials ISS Experiment 8): After MISSE-7 was retrieved from the ISS, the 8th Materials on International Space Station Experiment (MISSE-8) was deployed to ISS and successfully began its mission. A few minutes after the MISSE-8 PEC was installed on the ISS, ground operators at both the DoD Space Test Program Houston Office and the Naval Research Laboratory were able to downlink health and status data, as well as science data from the active experiments on MISSE-8. This was followed by successful commanding of the MISSE-8 Forward Technology Solar Cell Experiment. All MISSE-8 systems are performing as expected. MISSE-8 supports a dozen active experiments with real-time data downlink, as well as hundreds of passive material experiments that will be returned to Earth for post-flight characterization. MISSE-8 will operate on the ISS for approximately two years, with a return to Earth scheduled inside the Dragon Capsule of the SpaceX-5 flight in early 2013.
STP-H3 (Space Test Program – Houston 3): MHTEX was successfully activated and the priming successfully completed. The Capillary Pumped Loops startup was successfully performed as well as demonstration of the Advanced Evaporator. The system is being put into steady state mode for heat load performance characterization that will continue for approximately 2 months before continuing on to the next test objective. The DISC experiment is a star field imager and was successfully activated. It has demonstrated its basic capability to acquire time tagged images and the PIs are currently working to process the raw data into a useable star tracking image. Canary, an ion spectrometer, is alive and operating nominally. Data has been taken and downlinked during several special command windows. The VADER activation and aliveness test went well. The VADER sample performance is degraded as expected due to the prolonged humidity exposure pre-flight. During EVA-3, Drew used an IR camera to take an 8 minute video of the VADER while the variable emissivity devices were in transition. This video has been received and currently being analyzed. This has the potential to return up to 70% of the Science by characterizing the degradation, effectively saving the VADER mission. The STP-H3 team would like to send a huge thanks to the crew for performing this task on such short notice.
