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Friday September 15 12:07 PM ET Astronauts Abandon Effort to Activate Power System

By Brad Liston

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Russian ground controllers told shuttle Atlantis astronauts on Friday to abandon efforts to activate a balky power-storage system aboard the International Space Station (news - web sites), leaving the problem for the first long-duration crew arriving in November.

The trouble developed with a sophisticated battery weighing hundreds of pounds and controlled by its own computer and software. One of eight aboard the newly opened Zvezda service module, it stores electricity generated by solar panels, then powers the station during nightside passes of the Earth.

Astronauts ferried three of the batteries to space and were supposed to install and activate them. One of the three failed to charge, the only miss on an otherwise on-target mission to open and outfit the Zvezda.

The Russian module, which joined two existing modules in July, will be headquarters for rotating teams of long-duration crews during the ongoing construction of the station, expected to last through 2006. The first of those crews, named Expedition One, is to arrive in November.

``Unfortunately, from the telemetry we see that it's still non-functional and the decision has been made to troubleshoot it when Expedition One is there,'' Moscow told Russian astronaut Yuri Malenchenko, a crewman aboard the U.S. space shuttle who has been working on the power system for three days.

The Russian-made batteries have been a problem almost since the first elements of the station were launched in 1998. On this trip the astronauts have replaced two batteries on a second Russian-built module, Zarya, and an earlier shuttle crew replaced four batteries on Zarya after they began to fail.

Russians space officials have said the batteries on Zarya were simply over-taxed by delays in space-station construction. Published reports have linked the problems to faulty procedures used by Russian ground crews.

The loss of a single battery aboard Zvezda should not affect operations, NASA (news - web sites) said.

But all eight batteries will be needed in January, when the U.S. laboratory module, Destiny, is added and power demands on the station are increased.

Elsewhere on the station, astronauts were stowing more than three tons of hardware and supplies. A Russian Progress cargo ship was completely emptied of its manifest and the crew of seven continued to offload cargo from the shuttle's pressurized hold.

The astronauts dubbed the utilitarian Progress ``the garage'' when they saw it stacked front to back with containers. Empty, they might call it a garbage barge because that will be its function.

A succession of Progress spacecraft will be filled with waste by space station crews -- from disposable food containers to lavatory refuse to laundry -- then dispatched to burn up during a high-speed reentry into Earth's atmosphere.

The Atlantis crew has shown obvious glee in occupying the 13-story station -- especially the Zvezda, which has a galley, staterooms, lavatory and a stationary bicycle directly in front of a porthole. Astronauts can watch the Earth roll past and even time themselves with every 90-minute orbit of the planet, giving new meaning to the term ``doing laps.''

During a series of press and television interviews, Atlantis commander Terrence Wilcutt was asked his opinion of a new U.S. game show to be produced by the ``Survivor'' team. The winner will spend a week aboard the Russian Mir space station.

``Actually, I was thinking about putting in an entry,'' said Wilcutt.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), September 15, 2000