ISS expedition 12

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Mission emblem
Mission emblem Expedition 12
Mission dates
Mission: ISS expedition 12
Crew: 2
Rescue ships: Soyuz TMA-7
Space station: ISS
Start: October 3, 2005, 05:27 UTC
Started by: Coupling of Soyuz TMA-7
The End: April 8, 2006, 20:28 UTC
Ended by: Decoupling from Soyuz TMA-7
Duration: 187d 15h 1min
Number of EVAs : 2
Total length of the EVAs: 11h 5m
Team photo
(from left) William S. McArthur and Valeri Tokarew
(from left) William S. McArthur and Valeri Tokarew
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ISS Expedition 12 is the mission name for the 12th long-term crew of the International Space Station (ISS) . The crew lived and worked on board the ISS between October 3, 2005 and April 8, 2006.

team

Substitute team

Originally, Alexander Lasutkin provided as a flight engineer of the backup crew. However, on August 9, 2005, Lasutkin suffered a heart attack while studying in Houston and was hospitalized for several days. He was then removed from the team and replaced by Mikhail Tyurin .

Mission description

The expedition started on October 1, 2005 at 03:54:53 UTC together with the US space tourist Gregory Olsen on board the Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft with Tokarev as Soyuz commander and McArthur as Soyuz flight engineer. Docking with the ISS took place fully automatically on October 3 at 05:26:58 UTC over Central Asia. At 08:36 UTC the hatches were opened and the crew of Soyuz TMA-7 entered the space station. On October 9th, Expedition 12 took command of the ISS, officially replacing Expedition 11 .

The Expedition 12 should be two to three spacewalks to perform (EVAs). The first external activity took place on November 7, 2005. McArthur and Tokarew wore US space suits and left the station through the Quest airlock (1). The EVA started at 15:32 UTC 62 minutes late because Tokarev had forgotten to open a pressure equalization valve in the airlock. First, the two spacemen installed a video camera on the P1 lattice structure segment (2), which is necessary for the later expansion of the solar modules. Then they removed a defective controller from the S1 grid structure segment (4), which was responsible for controlling a radiator. It should be brought back to earth with the next shuttle visit to look for the cause of the error. Next, the astronauts removed the Floating Potential Probe (FPP) from the P6 solar panel (3). The 30 kg device had measured the station's electrical potential for the past five years and has now been dismantled because it no longer worked. As there were concerns that parts of the FPP could become detached and thus pose a potential danger to the station, it was decided to "throw away" the device. William S. McArthur transported the FPP behind the station, where it entered the earth's atmosphere after about 100 to 150 days and burned up in the process. Finally, the space travelers replaced a defective switch on the station's rail vehicle, the Mobile Transporter . The 5 hour and 22 minute field mission ended at 20:54 UTC. All planned work has been done.

Spacecraft on November 7, 2005 - the work points are numbered

On November 18, 2005 at 08:45 UTC, the expedition uncoupled the Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft from the Pirs docking port to make it free for the second space exit and manually docked at the lower one 20 minutes later, about 50 meters away Docking socket of the Sarja module.

The second space exit began on February 3, 2006. McArthur and Tokarew left the station at 22:44 UTC wearing Russian spacesuits - both with red stripes - via the Pirs module. During this exit, the “ SuitSat-1 ” satellite was initially deployed . This was a disused Russian Orlan-M space suit , in which some assemblies were installed. The spacesuit was expected to have enough energy to function for two to four days. There was a transmitter on board that worked on a frequency of 145.990 MHz and sent greetings in five languages. SuitSat could be received for about two orbits around the earth, then the signal apparently got weak due to low battery power.

"SuitSat-1" moves away from the station after it has been suspended

After the start of “SuitSat-1” at 23:02 UTC, the two space travelers brought an adapter from the Russian crane Strela on the Sarja module to the Pressurized Mating Adapter 3. This made space for a protective cover for the Zvezda module that was with them STS-116 should come to be stored temporarily. Afterwards, work was carried out on the mobile transporter , which is mounted on the main beam, for two hours . A cable leading to the Mobile Transporter was damaged on December 16. The redundant intact cable should be secured, but this repair failed. The damaged cable was replaced on the STS-121 mission . Next, the two of them recovered the Biorisk experiment from the outside of Zvezda and photographed the Russian micrometeorite measuring system . Tokarev and McArthur also inspected and photographed various parts of Zvezda's outer hull, particularly the areas around the control nozzles, an antenna, and a fuel outlet valve. The exit took a total of five hours and 43 minutes (until 04:27 UTC) and was the last space exit for this crew.

On March 20, 2006 at 06:49 UTC, the expedition uncoupled the Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft from the lower docking port of the Zarya module and manually docked 22 minutes later on the rear docking port of Zvezda, which was previously attached to the Progress-M-54 -Freighter was occupied.

On April 1, the follow-up crew of Expedition 13 arrived. Jeffrey Williams and William S. McArthur spent one night in the airlock during the station handover, in which the pressure was lowered. This method is intended to reduce the preparation time for future spacecraft . It also prevents the crew from having to breathe pure oxygen, which is very valuable for the station in order to prevent decompression sickness (diving sickness ).

The Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft with Tokarew, McArthur and the Brazilian Marco Pontes launched with Soyuz TMA-8 on board decoupled from the ISS on April 8, 2006 at 20:28 UTC. About three hours later, at 23:48 UTC, the landing capsule went down on parachutes in the Kazakh steppe .

NASA originally planned to bring William S. McArthur back on the space shuttle , but had to abandon it due to problems with the space shuttle fleet. It was also planned to bring the German ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter , who originally also belonged to Expedition 12, to the station on the STS-121 shuttle mission in autumn 2005. But that too had to be postponed due to the shuttle's starting difficulties, so that Reiter finally came to the station in July 2006 as a member of ISS Expedition 13.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ astronaut.ru: Александр Иванович Лазуткин. February 11, 2014, accessed February 29, 2016 (Russian).

See also

Web links

Commons : ISS Expedition 12  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

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