p.m. CDT, Friday, May 24, 2002 
Expedition 4 Crew 

The Expedition 4 crew of the International Space Station spent much of this week
preparing for the arrival  of Endeavour on STS-111  and their return home.  They
packed equipment and  supplies for return  to Earth aboard  Endeavour. They also
reconfigured  and checked  out spacesuits  and the  station’s joint  airlock  in
preparation for three spacewalks at the station by Endeavour mission specialists
Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin.

Expedition 4 Commander Yury Onufrienko  and astronauts Carl Walz and  Dan Bursch
were launched last Dec. 5 aboard  Endeavour’s STS-108 mission, and have been  on
the ISS since Dec. 7.

Endeavour is scheduled for launch on May 30. That would result in a docking with
the station on June 1.   Endeavour Commander Ken Cockrell, Pilot  Paul Lockhart,
and mission specialists Chang-Diaz and Perrin are bringing the Expedition 5 crew
to the station. That crew is  commanded by Valery Korzun and includes  astronaut
Peggy Whitson and cosmonaut Sergei Treschev. 

The first two  of the three  spacewalks by Chang-Diaz  and Perrin will  focus on
installation  of  a  new  Mobile Base  System  for  the  station’s robotic  arm,
Canadarm2. It  will allow  the arm  to move  along the  railroad-like tracks  of
station’s main truss, eventually  to reach a length  of more than 350  feet. The
third spacewalk is to change out the wrist roll joint of Canadarm2.

On Friday, Dan Bursch worked with the Biomass Production System, a plant  growth
experiment  using  wheat and  a  plant related  to  cabbage and  radishes.  Each
crewmember was scheduled for an hour to pack personal possessions, as they  have
been for much of  this week. On Thursday  Walz and Bursch completed  their final
session with the PuFF (pulmonary function in flight) experiment, which looks  at
effects of microgravity on lung function.

Several experiments have been deactivated, including the Physics of Colloids  in
Space,  which was  shut down  Tuesday and  which will  be returned  to Earth  on
Endeavour. It is a study of fine  particles suspended in a fluid. An example  of
such fluids is paint.

Major systems aboard the station continue to function well as the ISS orbits  at
an average altitude of about 243 statute miles. Upcoming ISS status reports will
be incorporated into Mission Control status reports during STS-111.

Information on  the crew’s  activities aboard  the space  station, future launch
dates, as well as station sighting opportunities from anywhere on the Earth,  is
available on the Internet at:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

Details  on  station  science  operations  can  be  found  on  an  Internet site
administered by the  Payload Operations Center  at NASA's Marshall  Space Flight
Center in Huntsville, Ala., at:

http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov

The next  ISS status  report will  be issued  on Friday,  May 24,  or earlier if
developments warrant.