Six of the 9 orbital residents residing and dealing aboard the International Space Station relaxed on Monday following final week’s departure of Boeing’s uncrewed Starliner spacecraft. The trio on responsibility as we speak readied for the following crew to launch to the orbital outpost and examined a adverse strain go well with.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams congratulated flight groups and stated goodbye to the Starliner spacecraft (listen to the audio on X) that launched the duo to the station on June 5. The uncrewed Starliner undocked from the Harmony module’s ahead port at 6:04 p.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 6, and parachuted to a landing in New Mexico almost six hours later. Wilmore and Williams will stay in low-Earth orbit till February when they’re scheduled to return to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft with the Crew-9 mission.
The 2 veteran station residents relaxed as we speak having fun with a three-day weekend together with fellow NASA astronauts Tracy C. Dyson, Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, and Jeanette Epps. Nevertheless, Wilmore, Williams, and Epps spent a number of moments throughout Monday afternoon organising {hardware} for human analysis actions deliberate for all day Tuesday. The trio ready a specialised thigh cuff being studied for its potential to reverse the space-caused headward fluid shifts in astronauts probably stopping imaginative and prescient points and serving to crews regulate to totally different gravity environments.
Expedition 71 Commander Oleg Kononenko readied the Rassvet module for the docking of the Soyuz MS-26 crew ship deliberate for 3:33 p.m. EDT on Wednesday. Kononenko organized instruments and cargo making area inside Rassvet and arrange crew sleep stations for the brand new crewmates. The Soyuz rocket will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:23 p.m. on Wednesday carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Wagner to the area station for a six-and-a-half month mission.
Kononenko additionally joined fellow cosmonauts Nikolai Chub and Alexander Grebenkin and examined the decrease physique adverse strain go well with for its potential to counter the consequences of weightlessness on the human physique and assist crews regulate faster to the return to Earth’s gravity. Kononenko and Chub are on account of return to Earth with Dyson contained in the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft in late September. Grebenkin is concentrating on his return to Earth in early October with SpaceX Crew-8 crewmates Dominick, Barratt, and Epps.
