Fri, Oct 21, 2005
And Heading Right For ANN HQ... Wish Us Luck!
Television cameras aboard the international space station are
showing dramatic views of record-setting Hurricane Wilma. The video
captured from 222 miles above the storm is airing on the NASA TV
Video File segment.
Aboard the space station, Commander Bill McArthur and Flight
Engineer Valery Tokarev are quickly acclimating themselves to their
new home in space, conducting experiments and performing routine
maintenance. Scheduled activities this week for the crew include
renal stone experiment data collection and the replacement of a
trajectory control system unit panel in the Pirs Docking
Compartment.
On Tuesday, flight controllers initiated the first of two
11-minute, 40-second engine firings from a docked Progress
spacecraft to increase the station's altitude by about 8 statute
miles. Less than two minutes after the first firing began, the
reboost was aborted due to a problem with the Progress' thrusters.
The second burn was not attempted. Russian flight controllers are
investigating the situation, and the aborted reboost will have no
impacts on station operations.
Mission Control in Houston took advantage of the station's
cameras to capture video of Hurricane Wilma as it churns through
the Caribbean. The National Hurricane Center warns that Wilma is a
potentially "catastrophic" hurricane.
The station's cameras viewed the storm at about 9:22 a.m. EDT,
as the orbiting laboratory passed directly over the hurricane's
eye. The once-category five (now four) storm was located in the
Caribbean Sea, 340 miles southeast of Cozumel, Mexico. Station
cameras are expected to obtain additional video during passes above
the storm.
NASA TV is available on the Web and on an MPEG-2 digital signal
accessed via satellite AMC-6, at 72 degrees west longitude,
transponder 17C, 4040 MHz, vertical polarization.
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