Week Begins with Robotics Prep for Spacewalk and Advanced Research
Expedition 75 began the week gearing up for a spacewalk to upgrade the International Space Station’s power generation system. Research into bioprinted blood vessels and relaxation techniques, as well cargo operations rounded out Monday’s schedule.
Flight engineers Anil Menon of NASA and Joshua Kutryk of CSA (Canadian Space Agency) will exit the Quest airlock at 8 a.m. EDT on Thursday to install one of two roll-out solar arrays on the orbital outpost’s port side truss structure. NASA flight engineers Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney will support the spacewalkers in and out of their spacesuits and assist the duo with the Canadarm2 robotic arm during the planned six-hour and 45-minute spacewalk. Live coverage of the spacewalk will begin on NASA+ starting at 6:30 a.m.
The four astronauts joined each other on Monday and familiarized themselves with the Canadarm2 maneuvers necessary to support Thursday’s spacewalk. Menon and Kutryk will first release the roll-out solar array from an external pallet. Menon then will attach himself to the robotic arm, retrieve the roll-out solar array, then ride the Canadarm2 to the installation worksite. Kutryk will remain tethered to the truss structure, translate to the port truss worksite, and join Menon to complete the installation job. Afterward, mission controllers will activate the new roll-out solar array.
Menon and Kutryk also checked out their emergency spacesuit jetpacks for fuel quantity, battery power, and thruster functionality. Watkins then assisted Kutryk ensuring spacesuit cooling and water systems were safely configured for Thursday’s spacewalk.
Watkins and Menon also had time to work inside the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft transferring supplies back and forth from the space station. Dragon docked autonomously to the Harmony module’s space-facing port on Oct. 15 and is due to return to Earth in mid-November loaded with science and hardware for analysis.
Delaney began his shift documenting his sleep patterns on a computer tablet for the RelaxPro investigation that is exploring how to improve stress reduction during a long duration spaceflight. Next, he treated and nourished bioprinted blood vessel tissues helping researchers take advantage of microgravity to create custom, individualized tissues for patients.
Station commander Pyotr Dubrov and flight engineer Anna Kikina, both from Roscosmos, partnered together wearing arm, wrist, and finger cuffs to measure the responsiveness of the circulatory system to weightlessness. Flight engineer Sergey Teteryanikov continued studying how super intelligence tools may advance crew operations and communications with mission controllers.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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Mark A. Garcia
