The International Space Station (ISS) has been occupied continuously since 1 November 2000, with the arrival of the Expedition 1 Crew. Much had changed by the time the Expedition 8 Crew came aboard. The Station had nearly doubled in size.

The Crew lifted off from Baykonur Cosmodrome on 18 October 2003 at 12:38 AM CDT (5:38 GMT). Soyuz TMA-3 rode to orbit in about nine minutes of powered flight atop a Soyuz Starsem booster. Inside were Soyuz Commander Alexander "Sasha" Kaleri, Mission Commander Michael Colin Foale. Occupying the third seat, and representing the ESA on the Cervantes Mission, was Astronaut Pedro Francisco Duque of Spain.

Docking to ISSy's PIRS module took place on 20 October at 2:16 AM CDT (7:16 GMT). The new crew were greeted warmly by their predecessors of the Expedition 7 Crew. After a week of joint operations and handover of command, the Expedition 7 Crew, with ESA Astronaut Duque, closed hatches between the Station and Soyuz TMA-2 for their return home on 27 October.

During their six month stay aboard, Foale and Kaleri conducted an extensive program of scientific experiments and research. These included 27 different experiments in five categories of investigation.

A single EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity or spacewalk) was mounted from the PIRS docking and airlock module in Russian Orlan spacesuits on 26 February 2004. This was the first ever two man EVA executed from ISSy with no one left on board to monitor systems. This task fell to ground controllers (US - Russia) using remote telemetry. The spacewalk was cut short due to a malfunction in the cooling system of Kaleri's suit.

The arrival of the Expedition 9 Crew aboard Soyuz TMA-4 on 21 April 2004 signalled the final days of Expedition 8. After a week of joint activities, Expedition 8 (Along with visiting ESA Astronaut Andre Kuipers from the Netherlands) entered their Soyuz vehicle once again. Undocking occurred at 3:52 PM CDT (20:52 GMT) on 29 April. Despite a worrisome helium leak from a tank in the spacecraft, a safe landing near Arkalyk Kazakhstan was made at 7:11 PM CDT, 29 April 2004 (00:11 30 April GMT). Total flight duration: 194 days 18 hours 33 minutes.

Since the middle of January 2004, the local educational consortium in Sacramento, California (SECC) has been carrying one hour per day of live TV coverage of activities aboard the International Space Station (ISS) at 8 AM Pacific Time, Monday through Friday. I began to record these hours on VHS tape for my own analysis. At the time if this incident, the Expedition 8 Crew were working with their Orlan spacesuits in preparation for a spacewalk some six days later (EVA 8a, 26 February 2004).
 
During the course of recording the events of 19 February 2004, I noticed an announcement, which is quite inconsistent with the facts. The NASA commentator essentially claimed that the skies of Eastern Canada are out of the range of the NASA communications network. Facts, and past precedent render this claim a falsehood. See for yourself the exact words of the NASA Mission Control announcer. This statement was made at 10:28 AM (16:28 GMT) Central Standard Time, and is a direct quote.

C = The NASA Commentator who remarks on events as they unfold

All Orange italics mine for emphasis. Hesitations and grammatical errors are left in as originally spoken. JC.

TRANSCRIPT OF NASA COMMENTS

C: "At this hour, as the International Space Station ....…. uh, flies at about two hundred and forty miles over, uh, Eastern Canada, the station is outside of the range of communication with, uh, the flight control teams, and uh, but is expected to, uh, move back into communications, uh, shortly."  

END TRANSCRIPT

As one can see, this is not an ambiguous statement. The announcer is very clear that this is not an issue with malfunctioning equipment, or “dish shadowing”. He clearly states that ISS is "Out of Range". There is an area centered on the Indian Ocean, which NASA refers to as the ZOE, or Zone of Exclusion. A full explanation is there. They claim that in this region there are no communication satellites, or ground stations, to handle communications traffic for the ISS and the Shuttle. I have delved deeply into this claim, and found it wanting in the worst way. But that’s another story. What we are looking at here is the claim for such a zone over Canada.

The picture at left is from STS-114, and shows Shuttle Discovery over the same part of Canada that ISSy was flying over.

Eastern Canada is the most populated, and technologically saturated region of that country. Of course, Eastern Canada is also adjacent to the North Eastern United States. This area of Earth has absolutely no shortage of ground-based tracking stations in line of sight to the position of the ISS at that time.