Space Station (ISS) Status 11/10/05

With their first spacewalk behind them, the crew of the International
Space Station pressed ahead this week to prepare for several upcoming
milestones.

Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery
Tokarev got a special musical wakeup call this weekend as Paul
McCartney connects with them live from a concert in Anaheim, Calif.
The call took place at 12:55 a.m. EST Sunday.

McArthur and Tokarev spent the week servicing the spacesuits used
Monday for a 5 hour, 22 minute excursion outside the station. During
the spacewalk, they installed a television camera, jettisoned an
inactive science experiment and removed and replaced other equipment
on the truss system of the complex.

The crew's second spacewalk is planned for Dec. 7. McArthur and
Tokarev will don Russian Orlan spacesuits and exit the Pirs Docking
Compartment airlock for that excursion. During the spacewalk, they
will move a cargo crane adapter, collect science experiments from the
hull of the Zvezda Service Module and manually launch an expired
Russian spacesuit equipped with amateur radio equipment. Called
SuitSat, the experiment is designed to see if ham radio contacts can
be made with a free-flying transmitter.

To prepare for the spacewalk, McArthur and Tokarev will relocate their
Soyuz spacecraft from the Pirs docking port to the nadir docking port
of the Zarya module on Nov. 18, briefly leaving the station
unoccupied.

Earlier today, four thruster engines on the Progress cargo spacecraft
were fired for more than 33 minutes in two separate reboost maneuvers
to raise the altitude of the outpost. The station is now in a near
circular orbit of 219 miles to accommodate the launch and docking of
the next resupply ship in December. The reboost was the longest ever
completed using Progress engines.

On Wednesday, Tokarev replaced a control panel for the station's
toilet in Zvezda that had malfunctioned earlier in the week. The
temporary loss of the use of the device's liquid disposal component
had no impact on station operations. Following the troubleshooting,
the toilet is now operating normally.