This is mission control Houston, welcome to today's ISS update.
It is Thursday, March seventh 2013.
This is a live view inside the International Space Station
flight control room here at the Johnson Space Center.
This team today is being led by flight director Mike Lammers,
today's Capcom serving beside him is Leslie Ringo,
and she will be the voice of to the crew of Expedition 34
on board the orbiting complex.
The crew has had a busy last few days so working
on quite a variety of experiments
and routine maintenance tasks,
inside the International Space Station,
but also outside as well.
After we went off the air Yesterday
around one p.m. central time, ground commands were sent
to the International Space Station robotic arm,
it was instructed to go inside reach inside the trunk section
of the SpaceX Dragon vehicle and retrieve these two grapple bars
that were flown up to the orbiting complex inside this
unpressurized section of this cargo vehicle.
Everything went according to plan and then just a few minutes
for your ground teams were able to remove those grapple bars
from Dragon and to get them installed
on it payload attachment point
on the station's mobile base structure.
That is where they will remain until the summer
when they will be retrieved during the first
of two spacewalks are planned for the crew.
Chris Cassidy and Luca will go outside probably
around July time frame to retrieve those grapple bars
as one of the tasks they will be doing and will move them
over to the S-1 in P1 truss this on the immediate left
and right-hand side of the station's structure
and that is really will be stored will permanently
and told her needed to possibly remove one
of the station's radiator parts
that are outside the space station itself.
All went according to plan yesterday
that ground commanded robotic operation went off
without a hitch.
Inside the space station, there is some maintenance taking place
on the the carbon dioxide removal assembly.
Theirs is two of these inside space station.
This particular one of the crews working
on is inside the tranquility node.
The crew worked to today to relocate that particular CDRA
as it is known, over to the Kibo laboratory.
This is simply to give them more room to work.
There's quite a bit of equipment
and exercise equipment inside Tranquility,
so to give them more elbow room they moved CDRA from there
to Kibo and once they get it set up they are going
to spend a few days removing the scrubbing beds
that are part of CDRA.
There are two brand-new beds that are flown
up on the Dragon vehicle.
They are going to replace both of those and then one
of the beds that is going to come
out of this Tranquility CDRA is going to be moved
over to the Destiny CDRA so some swapping
of the parts going on there.
Some of those used beds will come home aboard the
SpaceX flight.
There is also a valve that is going to be replaced
that the Tranquility bed, Tranquility CDRA as well.
Earlier this morning some activities
with Robonaut took place.
The crew watched along as ground commands were sent
to checkout Robonaut's arms,
which you can see moving around there.
Also Robonaut's vision sensors were checked out.
This robot continuing to be put through its paces
as the ground teams check it out and make sure
that is operating according to a plan.
The crew that is getting ready to come home Kevin Ford,
Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin they are
in their final week aboard the International Space Station.
There due for a landing on March fourteenth went
through a Soyuz descent drill today namely Novitskiy
and Tarelkin were inside their Soyuz TMA-06M,
which is a docked there to the Poisk module.
They basically reenacted what they're going to be doing coming
up in a week as the ground teams there in Russia followed along
with them and made sure everything was going according
to plan.
Here is a look at what is going to happen on the fourteenth
of beginning at 3:45 p.m. central time we will have their
farewell and hatch closure coverage beginning here
on NASA television.
The actual hatch closure itself will take place
at 4:15 p.m. central time.
Our second broadcast begins at 7:15 p.m. central,
with undocking coverage from here inside mission control,
and then the undocking ticketless
at 7:30 p.m. central time, some 15 minutes after that.
Then our third broadcast begins at 9:45 p.m. central time
with landing coverage,
the de-orbit burn will replace a 10:04 p.m. central
and landing will take place at 10:57 p.m. central time.
So a fairly quick turnaround for your de-orbit burn
down to the landing coverage.
That is three 9:57 a.m. the next morning on March fifteenth there
in Kazakhstan, quite a chilly morning will be greeting this
crew as get back on Earth with the temperatures being probably
in the twenties climbing up to the thirties during the day.
Meanwhile, the crew that is getting ready to launch
to the station Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin,
Chris Cassidy they've been undergoing final
and the activities and training simulation runs there
at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center,
they had their all traditional news conference there at GCTC
in Star City, Russia and they travel to Red Square
in Moscow today where they laid flowers
at the Kremlin wall were several Russian space icons are buried.
That is part of a traditional of prelaunch activities
as this crew gets ready to head up to the station on March 28.
As a final note, on board the space station today Expedition
34 has several different Earth observation opportunities,
coastal wetlands around the Caspian Sea
that they have a chance to look at.
They will be flying over Moldova, they have a chance
to capture that if they have the time.
They will be flying over Armenia and Mount Ararat
which is a famous mountain in that area.
And finally they will be fying over the state of Georgia
in the United States and the Altimha River, which is one
of the largest and least developed rivers
on the East Coast.
Of course you can log on to your well thought eol.jsc.nasa.gov,
once again eol.jsc.nasa.gov to take a look at any
of these images and maybe you might see your hometown as well.