Second Time An Odd Crunching Noise Was Heard Aboard The
Station
Four months after they were startled by the sound of something
metal being crunched, space station astronaut Michael Foale and his
Russian counterpart, Alexander Kaleri heard something eerily
similar again on Friday. And it sounded like it came from the same
general area where the first crunching noise was heard.
"I had the headset on, so I didn't hear it very clearly. But it
sounded sort of like a drum. It sounds sort of like a sheet of
something being bent," Kaleri told ground controllers.
NASA, however, said all systems appeared to be functioning
normally.
Both Kaleri and Foale were supposed to have checked the vicinity
where the noise was thought to have originated back in February,
during a daring two-man EVA that left the station itself
unattended. But Kaleri's spacesuit malfunctioned and cut short the
excursion. They didn't have a chance to see if something had struck
the outside of the ISS.
But the very fact that the same sort of noise was heard
emanating from the same general location indicated to ground
controllers that this could be a systems issue rather than space
debris impacting the station.
"It's very strange," Russian Mission Control said. "I doubt that
it would be a coincidence that you're hearing the same thing coming
from the same place."
In the meantime, NASA reports plans for the next crew rotation
on the International Space Station are on schedule this week, as
the Expedition 8 crew members moved into their final month on orbit
and their successors to within weeks of their scheduled launch.
On Thursday, Station managers conducted a Stage Operations
Readiness Review and found no constraints to the planned April 19
launch of the ISS Soyuz 8 carrying Expedition 9 Commander Gennady
Padalka and Flight Engineer Mike Fincke, along with European Space
Agency astronaut André Kuipers of the Netherlands. Kuipers
will be aboard the Station for nine days performing scientific
experiments under a commercial contract between ESA and the Federal
Space Agency (of Russia) during the handover to the new permanent
crew.
Preparations for the Expedition 9 flight will be further
evaluated next week during a Flight Readiness Review. Meanwhile,
the crew received its final certification for flight from the
Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, this
week.
Aboard the Station, Commander Mike Foale and Flight Engineer
Alexander Kaleri successfully completed the initial maintenance and
some functional testing of two new Russian Orlan spacesuits
delivered in January aboard the most recent Progress supply ship.
Those suits replace three older Orlan units on the complex. Padalka
and Fincke plant to use them on the first spacewalk of Expedition
9.
Foale also completed an external survey of the Station using
cameras on the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Foale was conducting his
final proficiency training operating the arm. During the survey,
Foale solved a mystery, reporting to Mission Control that a sound
he has heard from outside of the Destiny laboratory module was
being caused each time he commanded the Lab’s external camera
to tilt up and down.
On Friday morning, Kaleri reported another noise to Mission
Control in Moscow. He and Foale heard a metallic sound from
Zvezda's Instrument Compartment, a sound they said was very similar
to a noise they reported on Nov. 26, 2003, coming from the same
area. Russian controllers told the crew that the fact that the
noise has apparently repeated itself would likely indicate the
cause is the operation of a system on the station or some other
activity. Russia and U.S. controllers will continue to evaluate the
report. All systems on the complex continue to operate
normally.
Russian specialists are reviewing plans to replace a cooling fan
motor in the Soyuz spacecraft’s descent module. The fan,
which stopped functioning during the trip to the Station last
October, helps maintain a proper level of humidity inside the
Soyuz.
Mission Control completed a successful test of software that
will operate the Thermal Rotary Radiator Joints on the
Station’s truss. The large rotating joints will be used to
position the Station's radiators as they dissipate heat from the
complex. Ground controllers ran the check of programs that will
automate the positioning of the Station’s radiators as they
dissipate heat in the future when the Station's full cooling system
is activated.
Foale and Kaleri took time to discuss the progress of their
mission with students twice during the week. The crew answered
questions from a group of Houston-area middle school students
affiliated with the Aerospace Academy for Engineering and Teacher
Education. They also demonstrated how some common tools, such as a
wrench and hammer, function in space during a talk with elementary
school students from the Center for Science and Industry in
Columbus, Ohio.