Date: July 28th 2006

July 28, 2006

Grey Hautaluoma Headquarters, Washington 202-358-0688

James Hartsfield Johnson Space Center, Houston 281-483-5111

STATUS REPORT: SS06-035

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION STATUS REPORT: SS06-035

The International Space Station's Expedition 13 crew members are a week away from their first U S spacewalk They spent much of this week preparing themselves and their gear, and they activated a new laboratory super deep-freezer

Astronauts Jeff Williams and Thomas Reiter will leave the station's Quest airlock hatch at 9:55 a m EDT Thursday, Aug 3, for a spacewalk that is scheduled for six hours, 20 minutes Station Commander Pavel Vinogradov will serve as the spacewalk choreographer from inside the complex NASA TV coverage of the spacewalk will begin at 9 a m EDT

Williams and Reiter are both experienced spacewalkers They will install a device to measure the electrical field around the station's exterior; replace a rotary joint motor controller and a computer for a radiator on the station's truss; deploy two experiments that expose samples of various materials to space for extended periods; and install various other hardware on the station

To get ready, the crew prepared spacesuits and tools, conducted a dry run of egress and ingress procedures, and moved the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm into position The arm's cameras will provide television views of the spacewalk

This week the crew also began operations of the new Minus Eighty-degree Laboratory Freezer for ISS The equipment can reach temperatures as low as minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit Provided by the European Space Agency, the freezer was delivered on shuttle mission STS-121 earlier this month and is installed in the Destiny laboratory It has 300 liters (about 79 gallons) of freezing and storage capacity in four compartments for experiment samples to preserve them for return to Earth

On Tuesday, Russian flight controllers fired thrusters on the Progress supply ship docked to the aft end of the station to boost the station's altitude They raised the complex to an orbit of 219 by 203 statute miles The adjustment optimizes conditions for a docking by the Space Shuttle Atlantis, targeted for a launch window that begins Aug 27, and by the station's next crew, Expedition 14, set for launch in mid-September on a Russian Soyuz rocket

The next station status report will be issued on Thursday, Aug 3 after the spacewalk For more information about the crew's activities and station sighting opportunities, visit:

http://www nasa gov/station

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