Launch from Baikonur; landing 55 km northeast of
Arkalyk.
ISS
Expedition 12;
"caretaker" crew; docking to
ISS; crew
replaced
expedition 11
crew.
First
EVA by
McArthur and
Tokarev on 07.11.2005 (5h 22m) to install a television camera
on the station's part truss, needed for future assembly work, to remove the 5
year-old
FPP-experiment
(Floating Potential Probe) from the top of the P6 truss and to remove and
replace other equipment; on 18.11.2005 the Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft was relocated
from the Pirs docking port to the Nadir Docking port of the Zarya module; that
was necessary to start the second
EVA from out the
the Pirs Docking Compartment airlock.
Second
EVA by
McArthur and
Tokarev on 03.02.2006 (5h 43m) to deploy SuitSat, an unneeded
Russian spacesuit with an amateur radio transmitter. The SuitSat provided
recorded greetings in six languages to ham radio operators for about two orbits
of the Earth before it stopped transmitting, perhaps due to its batteries
failing in the cold environment of space. They then removed a grapple fixture
adapter for the Strela crane to the
PMA-3 on the
Unity module. Then they tried to securely install a safety bolt in a
contingency cutting device for one of two cables that provide power, data and
video to the Mobile Transporter rail car, but this failed. Finally they
retrieved an experiment to study the effect of the space environment on
microorganisms from the Russian Pirs airlock and photographed the exterior of
Zvezda.
On 20.03.2006 the Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft was relocated again,
now from the Zarya module to the Zvezda port. Additional work during this
mission included different research programs as Foot-Ground Reaction Forces
during Space Flight experiment (
FOOT),
Protein Crystal Growth Monitoring by Digital Holographic Microscope for the
International Space Station (PROMISS-4), Binary Colloidal Alloy Test, but also
“housekeeping”, repairing work, unload and reload of
Progress-freighters and more.
