The previous couple of months aboard the Worldwide House Station (ISS) have been eventful. Expedition 70 is underway after two crew handovers, a bearing on a photo voltaic array rotary joint seized up, and a coolant leak on the Russian phase occurred. At the moment, the ISS crew is making ready for Russian EVA-61 and US EVA-89 later this month.
Expedition 70 formally started after the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft left the Station with cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin together with NASA’s Frank Rubio aboard. The Soyuz capsule landed safely in Kazakhstan on Sept. 27, touching down at 11:17 UTC on the steppe southeast of Dzhezkazgan.
The landing signified the tip of the crew’s prolonged mission aboard the Station, which lasted over a 12 months as a substitute of the deliberate six-month mission attributable to a coolant leak on Soyuz MS-22. NASA astronaut Rubio set a brand new U.S. area endurance report of 371 days, eclipsing Mark Vande Hei’s report of 355 days, which was set in March 2022, and changing into the primary American to spend over one calendar 12 months constantly in area.
NASA astronaut and US Military Lt. Col. Frank Rubio smiling and waving after the Soyuz MS-23 touchdown in Kazakhstan. (Credit score: Invoice Ingalls/NASA)
Frank Rubio, 47, born in Los Angeles and of Salvadoran descent, is an authorized household doctor and flight surgeon. He was additionally a U.S. Military helicopter pilot and fight veteran earlier than becoming a member of the astronaut corps. Rubio turned a member of NASA Astronaut Group 22 in 2017 and launched to the Station aboard Soyuz MS-22 on Sept. 21, 2022. This was his first flight to area.
A couple of months later, at 00:45 UTC on Dec. 15, 2022, the MS-22 spacecraft suffered a coolant leak throughout preparations for a Russian EVA, which necessitated a change in plans for the MS-22 crew. Practically ten months after that coolant leak — ascribed to a micrometeoroid impression — and eight months after Progress MS-23 suffered an analogous difficulty, a brand new coolant leak was found on the Nauka science module of the Russian phase of the ISS.
The coolant leak was discovered to originate from certainly one of two radiators on the Nauka module, which launched in 2021 after a decade-long sequence of delays. The leak was seen by the ISS crew after 17:00 UTC on Oct. 9. Expedition 70 flight engineer and Crew-7 commander Jasmin Moghbeli radioed the information to Mission Management in Houston, saying “Yeah, there’s a leak coming from the radiator on MLM,” with MLM being an acronym for the Nauka module.
Photos of the Nauka module and the leak had been taken and despatched to the bottom by Expedition 70 commander and Crew-7 member Andreas Mogensen, and these photos might be analyzed by floor groups for extra data on the leak. Controllers in Moscow have analyzed the state of affairs and have mentioned there might be no vital impacts to operations.
Roscosmos issued a press release saying that the leak occurred on the exterior radiator circuit, which is a backup circuit on Nauka. They additional said that the first thermal management circuit on Nauka is working usually and the crew and the Station will not be in peril. The leak has since ceased.
Expedition 70 crew photograph. From left to proper: Nikolai Chub, Konstantin Borisov, Andreas Mogensen, Oleg Kononenko, Jasmin Moghbeli, Satoshi Furukawa and Loral O’Hara. (Credit score: NASA)
Whereas working by way of the Nauka leak state of affairs, the Expedition 70 crew, led by Danish ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, was additionally making ready for 2 spacewalks in October and one other due earlier than the tip of the 12 months. Together with commander Mogensen, NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, JAXA’s Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos’ Konstantin Borisov arrived on the Station aboard the SpaceX Crew-7 mission, whereas Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA’s Loral O’Hara arrived aboard Soyuz MS-24.
Astronauts Mogensen and O’Hara had been planning to conduct a spacewalk on Oct. 12 to put in a brand new high-definition digital camera on the Station and collect microbial samples from the Station’s exterior. Nevertheless, that EVA, now often known as US EVA-90, has been pushed to no sooner than this coming December because of the Nauka coolant leak.
Russian EVA-61 is scheduled for 18:30 UTC on Oct. 25 and is at present set to final round seven hours. Cosmonauts Kononenko and Chub, after leaving the Poisk airlock, might be tasked with putting in an artificial radar communications system, deploying a photo voltaic sail expertise satellite tv for pc, and changing electrical connector patch panels on the Russian phase of the Station.
Astronaut Jasmin “Jaws” Moghbeli is testing an EVA swimsuit with the help of Andreas Mogensen and Satoshi Furukawa. (Credit score: NASA)
Following the Russian EVA, U.S. EVA-89, scheduled for Oct. 30 at 7:05 AM CDT (12:05 UTC), will start from the Quest airlock module, after being delayed from Oct. 20. Astronauts Moghbeli, performing as EV1 with the pink stripes, and O’Hara, performing as EV2 with the all-white swimsuit, are scheduled to make their first spacewalks. They’ll take away an antenna electronics field and substitute a trundle bearing meeting on the port photo voltaic array rotary joint (SARJ) of the Station’s truss.
On Aug. 23, the ISS On-Orbit Standing Report famous that the port SARJ’s trundle bearing quantity seven skilled a major bearing seizure and stopped rotating. Although the secondary bearing within the meeting nonetheless labored, it was solely licensed for 30 days of steady operation, and the SARJ needed to be parked in a protected place to reduce the usage of this bearing.
The SARJ is vital to the Station’s operation as a result of it rotates the massive photo voltaic arrays mounted to the truss, as soon as per orbit. The photo voltaic arrays on the truss, which offer a lot of the energy to the complicated, must be rotated regularly to face the Solar for efficient energy era, and the lack of this functionality would severely impression Station operations.
Every 1161-kilogram SARJ has 12 trundle bearings, and these bearings straddle an inboard and an outboard race ring. These race rings are somewhat over three meters in diameter, and the inboard ring — going through the Station’s pressurized modules and central truss parts — is stationary, whereas the outboard ring rotates.
The SARJ trundle bearings are designed for on-orbit alternative, and that functionality proved useful in the course of the Station’s meeting part. Some weeks after the starboard SARJ was launched aboard STS-117 and activated in June 2007, anomalous vibrations and energy draw readings had been famous. Subsequent inspection of the joint throughout an EVA discovered that the joint had high quality steel shavings throughout the outboard race ring floor and on a trundle-bearing curler housing.
Astronauts Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper (left) and Shane Kimbrough (proper) working on the starboard SARJ in the course of the second EVA of the STS-126 mission. (Credit score: NASA)
11 trundle bearings on the joint had been changed and the outboard race ring was cleaned, then lubricated with grease in the course of the STS-126 mission in November 2008. This restore, which wanted a particular instrument developed for lubricating the race ring, dramatically improved the SARJ’s operation, and the joint could possibly be operated usually. The port SARJ, which was famous as pristine throughout an inspection, additionally received handled with lubricant throughout STS-126 in a subsequent EVA.
EV2 Loral O’Hara might be conducting the trundle bearing meeting alternative in addition to an utility of lubricant to the rotating race ring. EV1 Jasmin Moghbeli might be assigned to take away an H-fixture on the 2A Beta Gimbal Meeting on the port truss to organize the location for a future photo voltaic array improve within the meantime. Moghbeli will even modify a cable that’s interfering with a digital camera meeting.
Moghbeli and O’Hara are additionally scheduled to take away a failed communications field often known as the Radio Frequency Group (RFG) on the starboard aspect of the Station. The field was unable to be eliminated throughout a previous EVA so there was work finished to determine the way to full this process.
The particular wrench designed for the second try and take away the failed electronics field, proven throughout an Oct. 6 press convention. (Credit score: NASA)
This included the event of a particular “RFG Wrench” to entry the 5 aft wedge clamps holding the field to the stowage platform for the process. The astronauts will work collectively to try to free the RFG utilizing the particular instrument and to stow it within the Quest airlock. The EVA is predicted to final round six and a half hours if every part goes as deliberate.
Through the first weeks of Expedition 70, the Station crew stuffed the Cygnus NG-19 S.S. Laurel Clark with trash after unloading cargo from the spacecraft. The crew has additionally labored on varied experiments, notably the Complement of Built-in Protocols for Human Exploration Analysis on Various Mission Durations (CIPHER) suite of 14 human well being research. The CIPHER research are being finished on as much as 30 astronauts on missions of assorted lengths from lower than three and a half months to over eight months in area.
Drawing of the present complement of visiting automobiles hooked up to the Station. They’re set to be joined by CRS-29 subsequent month. (Credit score: NASA)
The Expedition 70 crew can be making ready for the launch of one other cargo spacecraft, a SpaceX Cargo Dragon, on the CRS-29 mission, which is scheduled for launch no sooner than Nov. 5, at 10:01 PM EST (03:01 UTC). This flight will embody an atmospheric wave experiment and a modem for a laser communications experiment together with different experiments, meals, provides, and gear.
(Lead picture: The ISS and Canadarm2 soar 266 miles above the coast of Argentina. Credit score: NASA)
