4 new crew members are adjusting to life on the Worldwide Area Station and gearing up for a number of months of microgravity analysis to learn people dwelling on and off the Earth. In the meantime, one other quartet that has been orbiting Earth since March is packing up and handing over obligations to the brand new crew earlier than returning to Earth this week.
Expedition 73 expanded to eleven people on Saturday when NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission docked to the orbital outpost aboard the Dragon spacecraft after launching from Florida about 15 hours earlier. Crew 11’s Commander and Pilot, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, each from NASA, and Mission Specialists Kimiya Yui from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Company) and Oleg Platonov from Roscosmos spent the weekend unpacking their Dragon spacecraft, reviewing security procedures, and getting conversant in area station techniques.
The crew is properly educated for its area analysis program and can quickly start investigating all kinds of microgravity phenomena to achieve insights solely achievable in area. They are going to discover manufacturing top quality stem cells, options to antibiotics to deal with bacterial infections, cell division in vegetation to advertise area agriculture, and extra.
NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers together with JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov are serving to their new crewmates rise up to hurry with dwelling and dealing on the orbital lab. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 crewmates additionally can be going residence this week aboard one other Dragon spacecraft finishing a five-month mission. Throughout their keep in area, the crew studied space-caused psychological and bodily modifications in astronauts, blood move from the mind to the center, future lunar navigation strategies, and extra.
The homebound foursome has spent the final two weeks gathering private gadgets and cargo for loading inside Dragon. Over the following couple of days, Crew-10 may also pack important analysis samples stowed in moveable science freezers inside Dragon for retrieval and evaluation again on Earth. In the course of the closing cargo-packing and scientific sample-stowing duties, the crew may also evaluate departure procedures earlier than getting into Dragon and undocking.
NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky will proceed their mission aboard the station and conduct their complement of area analysis till December. The trio have been helping with the crew swap actions as Kim helped Fincke study to work out on the superior resistive train machine. Ryzhikov confirmed the Crew-11 foursome the placement of emergency {hardware} and find out how to use NASA and Roscosmos station {hardware}. Zubritsky helped Peskov as he examined the lower body negative pressure suit that will counteract space-caused head and eye strain and assist crews alter faster to the return to Earth’s gravity.
Study extra about station actions by following the area station weblog, @space_station on X, in addition to the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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