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Station Swaps Command on Wednesday Before Thursday’s Crew Departure

The Expedition 67 crew is in the midst of a crew swap as three new flight engineers adapt to life in space and another crew prepares to go home this week. Meanwhile, with 10 people living aboard the International Space Station today there were plenty of opportunities to keep up ongoing microgravity research and lab maintenance.

New Flight Engineer Frank Rubio from NASA was back on space physics today installing hardware for the Intelligent Glass Optics study inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox. The investigation explores using artificial intelligence to adapt materials manufacturing, such as fiber optics, to the vacuum of space. His two cosmonaut partners, flight engineers Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin of Roscosmos, spent time unloading their Soyuz MS-22 crew ship and working on a variety of life support tasks. The duo also took turns studying ways to pilot spacecraft and robots on future planetary missions.

Station Commander Oleg Artemyev is turning his attention to this week’s return to Earth with Roscosmos Flight Engineers Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov. The trio will board their Soyuz MS-21 crew ship and undock from the Prichal module at 3:34 a.m. EDT on Thursday. They will descend into Earth’s atmosphere and parachute to a landing in Kazakhstan less than three-and-a-half hours later completing a six-month space research mission.

Artemyev will hand over station leadership responsibilities to ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti on Wednesday. The traditional Change of Command ceremony starts at 9:35 a.m. EDT live on NASA TV, the agency’s app and its website.

Cristoforetti will lead the new Expedition 68 crew until she and three of her SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom crewmates depart the space station in October. She joined NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, and Jessica Watkins today and reviewed their Dragon descent procedures with flight controllers on Earth. The quartet have been aboard the station since their arrival inside Freedom on April 27.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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Mark Garcia

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New Trio Getting to Work Before Next Crew Goes Home This Week

The orbiting lab’s three newest residents are beginning their science and maintenance tasks after several days of International Space Station orientation and familiarization activities. In the meantime, three Expedition 67 crew members are less than a week away from ending their mission and returning to Earth after living and working in space for six months.

NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio kicked off his first full week on the station with a physics study that uses artificial intelligence to adapt materials manufacturing to the vacuum of space. He began Monday morning setting up the Microgravity Science Glovebox and servicing components inside the research device. Rubio then spent the afternoon preparing complex glass samples inside the glovebox for future experiment runs. The Intelligent Glass Optics investigation may help advance Earth and space-based industries including communications, aerospace, medicine, and astronomy.

Rubio’s cosmonaut crewmates, Flight Engineers Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, who rode with him to the station last week began their week with a variety of research and maintenance activities. Prokopyev started his day on water transfer activities before helping pack a Soyuz crew ship for its return to Earth on Thursday. Petelin also worked on water transfers throughout the day and explored how spaceflight affects the human immune system.

The station’s population will go back to seven crew members on Thursday after three cosmonauts undock in their Soyuz MS-21 crew vehicle and parachute to a landing in Kazakhstan. Station Commander Oleg Artemyev will board the Soyuz crew ship with Flight Engineers Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov and undock from the Prichal module at 3:34 a.m. EDT on Thursday. The trio will parachute to a landing in the steppe of Kazakhstan less than three-and-a-half hours later. NASA TV will broadcast the undocking and landing activities live on the agency’s app and website beginning at 3:15 a.m.

Artemyev will hand over station leadership responsibilities to ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti the day before he departs. The traditional Change of Command ceremony will be seen live on NASA TV starting at 9:35 a.m. on Wednesday.

The space station’s four other flight engineers stayed busy throughout Monday on a host of research activities including biology, botany, and combustion. NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins wore a specialized vest and headband beginning a two-day session to record her health functions for the Bio-Monitor study. NASA astronaut Bob Hines nourished and inspected plants growing for the XROOTS space agriculture study. Flight Engineer Kjell Lindgren of NASA set up the Confocal space microscope to study how microgravity affects the nervous system. Finally, Cristoforetti rerouted cables for a combustion research device to ensure its igniter can move correctly.

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Mark Garcia

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