The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon cargo craft atop has rolled out to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral House Pressure Station in Florida counting all the way down to a launch focused for no sooner than 2:45 a.m. on Sunday. Dragon is scheduled to dock to the Worldwide House Station’s ahead port on the Concord module at 7:30 a.m. on Monday delivering over 5,000 kilos of science, provides, and {hardware} to the Expedition 73 crew. NASA+ will start its launch protection at 2:25 a.m. on Sunday. Docking protection begins at 6 a.m. on Monday.
NASA Flight Engineers Mike Fincke and Jonny Kim shall be on obligation on Monday monitoring Dragon’s automated method and rendezvous. Fincke would be the first one to open Dragon’s hatch after it docks and enter the car starting 4 months of Dragon cargo operations. He and Kim joined fellow flight engineers Zena Cardman of NASA and Kimiya Yui of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Company) on Friday and reviewed Dragon’s mission profile and the number of cargo they’ll unpack and stow contained in the area station.
In the meantime, the orbital residents saved up their human analysis on Friday exploring how weightlessness impacts the center, muscle, and bone programs. Spacesuit work and lab upkeep rounded out the crew’s schedule on the finish of the week.
Kim labored all through the day contained in the Columbus laboratory module on biomedical science operations for the CIPHER investigation. The previous Navy SEAL referred to as all the way down to medical doctors on the bottom who monitored as he hooked up electrodes to his chest and scanned his thigh artery with an ultrasound system. The info will give medical doctors an perception into an astronaut’s cardiovascular system serving to enhance well being monitoring instruments and defending crews touring farther and residing longer in area.
Fincke arrange high-definition cameras and a movement seize system contained in the Tranquility module that may file his exercise on the superior resistive train system (ARED), {hardware} that mimics free weights on Earth. The train analysis is for the ARED Kinematics investigation that observes the stresses that an astronaut’s muscle tissue and bones expertise throughout a exercise in microgravity. Outcomes might result in improved train packages in area and safer coaching and higher rehabilitation procedures on Earth.
Cardman and Yui took the morning off on Friday earlier than wrapping up their workweek with science and upkeep duties. Cardman first took a robotics take a look at on a pc for the portion of the CIPHER research that measures cognition, or space-caused modifications to her mind construction and performance. Subsequent, she put in high-definition cameras that Fincke had serviced the day earlier than on to a spacesuit helmet. Yui swapped gas bottles for combustion analysis within the Kibo laboratory module then stowed the ARED {hardware} Fincke used earlier throughout his train investigation.
Station Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Flight Engineer Alexey Zubritsky, each from Roscosmos, took turns learning how microgravity impacts the cells that line the inside of the blood vessels and the way blood flows into tiny vessels. The duo then cut up up inventorying area station instruments and cleansing air flow programs all through the orbiting lab’s Roscosmos phase.
Roscosmos Flight Engineer Oleg Platonov started his shift on the finish of the week downloading Earth imagery of Southeast Asian and Australian landmarks captured mechanically in the course of the crew’s sleep shift. He then spent the remainder of his day contained in the Nauka science module changing orbital plumbing gear.
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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