Spacewalk and Japanese Cargo Craft Departure Preps Kick Off Week

The Expedition 74 crew kicked off the work week readying a spacesuit and learning procedures for an upcoming spacewalk later this month. The Worldwide House Station residents are additionally packing a Japanese cargo craft and getting ready it for departure from the Worldwide House Station on the finish of the week.

NASA flight engineers Chris Williams and Jack Hathaway partnered with one another earlier than lunchtime on Monday and unstowed spacesuit parts and staged them contained in the Quest airlock. Afterward, NASA flight engineer Jessica Meir labored inside Quest and put in leg and arm parts on a single spacesuit then swapped parts from one spacesuit to a different.

Hathaway later joined ESA (European House Company) Flight Engineer Sophie Adenot and reviewed how one can go well with up an astronaut, information a spacewalker out and in of the airlock, talk with mission controllers throughout a spacewalk, and extra. The astronauts are gearing up for a spacewalk that was postponed in January to put in a modification package and route cables for a future roll-out photo voltaic array on the port facet of the orbital outpost.

Williams additionally skilled for the departure of JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Company) HTV-X1 cargo craft that launched to the house station in October from Tanegashima House Middle. He reviewed the procedures he’ll use when the Canadarm2 robotic arm releases the HTV-X1 into Earth orbit and when monitoring the Japanese cargo craft’s departure. Meir, after her spacesuit work, continued packing the HTV-X1 with trash and discarded gear.

The HTV-X1 will first be robotically indifferent from the Concord module’s space-facing port on Thursday and parked in a single day for a sensor demonstration check. Subsequent, the Canadarm2 will launch HTV-X1 at 12 p.m. EST on Friday for 3 months of distant science actions earlier than its fiery, however secure reentry above the south Pacific Ocean. Stay protection begins at 11:45 a.m. EST on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and the company’s YouTube channel.

Amid the spacesuit and cargo-packed schedule, the astronauts additionally labored on superior expertise and human analysis. Williams completed putting in and configuring a pair of small robotic arms within the Kibo laboratory module that may check precision mobility and experiment automation in microgravity. Adenot took a cognition check to know how dwelling in microgravity impacts orientation, reasoning, decision-making, and extra. In the meantime, Hathaway and Meir took turns pedaling on the Future laboratory module’s train cycle as a coronary heart fee monitor measured their cardiac exercise offering insights into microgravity’s impact on the human physique.

Within the Roscosmos section of the orbital lab, flight engineers Sergei Mikaev and Andrey Fedyaev explored utilizing synthetic intelligence instruments to log a crew member’s actions enhancing communications and crew effectiveness. Station commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov carried out a photographic inspection of the Zvezda service module’s home windows then explored utilizing molecular beams to develop semiconductor buildings in an ultra-high vacuum.

Study extra about station actions by following the house station weblog, @space_station on X, in addition to the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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March 2, 2026 12:31PM