Three Worldwide House Station residents will return to Earth this weekend simply a few days earlier than the anticipated arrival of the subsequent SpaceX Dragon cargo mission. Quickly after that, two NASA astronauts will exit the orbital outpost for a photo voltaic array upkeep spacewalk.
Veteran orbital residents Don Pettit of NASA and Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, each from Roscosmos, are winding down a seven-month area analysis mission that started on Sept. 11, 2024. The Earthbound crewmates are scheduled to undock from the station’s Rassvet module at 5:57 p.m. EDT on Saturday inside their Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft ending the Expedition 72 mission. They are going to orbit Earth twice earlier than firing the Soyuz’ braking engines, descend into the ambiance, then parachute to a touchdown in Kazakhstan at 8:20 p.m. (6:20 a.m. on Sunday, April 20, in Kazakhstan).
The trio from NASA and Roscosmos spent the primary half of Wednesday reviewing the steps they are going to carry out to prepared the Soyuz spacecraft for undocking, in addition to the procedures they are going to use as soon as they depart the station and head again to Earth. Pettit then continued packing up his private gear for stowage aboard the Soyuz MS-26. Ovchinin and Vagner spent the final of half of their shift handing off their mission duties to the orbiting lab’s two latest cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky who arrived on the station on April 8.
Subsequent, the brand new Expedition 73 crew will flip its consideration to the arrival of the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft that can launch at 4:15 a.m. EDT on Monday, April 21, from NASA’s Kennedy House Middle. Dragon will dock to the Concord module’s space-facing port at 8:20 a.m. the next day delivering about 6,700 kilos of latest science experiments and station provides. Flight Engineers Jonny Kim of NASA and Takuya Onishi of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Company) skilled on Wednesday for the spacecraft’s arrival and will likely be on responsibility subsequent week monitoring Dragon’s automated strategy and docking.
Simply over every week after Dragon’s arrival, NASA Flight Engineers Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers will placed on their spacesuits and exit the orbiting lab’s Quest airlock for a six-and-half-hour spacewalk on Could 1. First, the duo will set up a modification equipment to organize the port facet truss construction for a brand new rollout photo voltaic array. Subsequent, they are going to relocate an antenna that communicates with approaching and departing business crew and cargo spacecraft. The astronauts spent Wednesday familiarizing themselves with the spacewalking instruments and elements they are going to use and organizing them inside Quest.
Flight Engineer Kirill Peskov spent the primary portion of his day gathering air samples from the Zvezda, Zarya, and Nauka modules for evaluation. Later, he centered on orbital plumbing duties transferring water between the station’s U.S. and Roscosmos segments.
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.
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