The Expedition 72 crew is preparing for a port relocation maneuver this weekend as a brand new cargo mission counts all the way down to a raise off subsequent week to resupply the International Space Station. In the meantime, stem cell analysis, a spacesuit examine, and a number of lab upkeep saved the astronauts and cosmonauts busy on Wednesday.
NASA Flight Engineer Nick Hague will command the SpaceX Dragon Freedom spacecraft when it undocks from the Harmony module’s ahead port at 6:35 a.m. EST on Sunday. He, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will take a brief journey in Freedom and redock to Concord’s space-facing port at 7:18 a.m. The port relocation maneuver opens up Concord’s ahead port for the upcoming Dragon cargo mission.
Hague and Wilmore took activates Wednesday getting ready for the Dragon cargo mission arriving quickly after Sunday’s Dragon Freedom relocation. The duo skilled on cargo operations then reviewed rendezvous procedures and monitoring instruments for the approaching SpaceX Dragon cargo craft. Hague additionally downloaded his well being knowledge collected from electrodes and the Ultrasound 2 machine for evaluation by researchers.
Science and upkeep rounded out the schedule on Wednesday as Commander Suni Williams serviced stem cells and checked out a spacesuit. She labored with Wilmore contained in the Kibo laboratory module inserting stem cell samples right into a microscope to picture for a blood disease and cancer study. Following that, Williams entered the Quest airlock and resized and configured a spacesuit forward of spacewalks deliberate for 2025.
NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit, on his fourth spaceflight, spent his morning eradicating the small satellite tv for pc deployer from Kibo’s airlock that had earlier deployed a number of CubeSats into Earth orbit for a sequence of technology studies. Afterward, Pettit labored on orbital plumbing duties flushing resupply tanks and transferring water to life help parts.
Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner continued upkeep and inspection actions within the aft finish of the Zvezda service module. Flight Engineer Aleksandr Gorbunov accomplished an experiment run and deactivated {hardware} that imaged the Earth’s nighttime ambiance in near-ultraviolet wavelengths.
Study extra about station actions by following the area station weblog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, in addition to the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
Get the most recent from NASA delivered each week. Subscribe right here: www.nasa.gov/subscribe
