Students from North Carolina and Rhode Island will have separate opportunities next week to hear from astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
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Life science and space physics continued aboard the International Space Station on Thursday helping researchers improve human health and advance fundamental knowledge. The Expedition 69 crew members also worked on spacesuit maintenance and ongoing cargo activities.
Flight Engineers Andreas Mogensen and Satoshi Furukawa concentrated their research activities on space biology to learn how weightlessness affects human immunity and the aging process. Mogensen from ESA (European Space Agency) spent his third day this week processing blood samples and preparing them for incubation to understand how space affects an astronaut’s immune system. Furukawa from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) sampled water from the Kibo laboratory module’s water recovery system, conducted a hearing test, them swapped out commercial research hardware.
NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio collected samples from the potable water dispenser and analyzed them to detect microbes and determine the quality of the water. Afterward, Rubio finalized the hardware replacement work inside the Cold Atom Lab preparing the quantum research device, that chills atoms to near absolute zero, for testing and operations.
NASA Flight Engineer Jasmin Moghbeli inventoried medical supplies inside the Human Research Facility and photographed the contents for review by specialists on the ground. Next, she checked out a spacesuit jet pack testing its components and performing leak checks. The jet pack, also called Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER), is attached to spacesuits the astronauts wear during spacewalks. The SAFER provides controls allowing a spacewalker to return to the station in the unlikely event they became untethered from the orbiting lab.
Roscosmos Flight Engineers Dmitri Petelin and Konstantin Borisov joined each other Thursday morning testing the lower body negative pressure suit that may help crew members readjust to Earth’s gravity environment. Petelin also collected water samples from an Orlan spacesuit cooling system for testing. Borisov partnered with Commander Sergey Prokopyev and installed docking hardware on the Zvezda service module’s aft port where the Roscosmos Progress 85 resupply ship is docked.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
Get weekly video highlights at: https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/
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Mark Garcia
Hubble’s colorful image of the globular star cluster Terzan 12 is a spectacular example of how dust in space affects starlight coming from background objects.
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The crew of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission will discuss their six-month science mission aboard the International Space Station during a news conference at 2:15 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Sept. 12, at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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The Expedition 69 crew aboard the International Space Station focused its main research activities on biotechnology on Wednesday. The orbital residents also continued the ongoing maintenance of lab hardware.
Researchers on the ground use the facilities aboard the space station to understand how living in weightlessness affects the human body. Some of the experiments operate remotely or autonomously, for others the astronauts set up and run the experiments, or even act as subjects as NASA and its international partners learn how to sustain crews on future missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
NASA Flight Engineer Jasmin Moghbeli began her day conducting DNA research by analyzing microbe samples collected from the orbital outpost’s potable water dispenser. She used a small commercial DNA sequencing device to identify the samples for the BioMole technology demonstration. BioMole may improve environmental monitoring systems on the station and future spacecraft traveling farther away from Earth.
Moghbeli then assisted JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa as he replaced components on the BioFabrication Facility (BFF). The 3D biological printer is testing printing organ-like tissues in microgravity with an eye to manufacturing whole human organs in space in the future.
Flight Engineer Andreas Mogensen of ESA (European Space Agency) continued his human research duties that he began on Tuesday. The two-time station visitor serviced blood samples that had been placed overnight in the Kubik research incubator then stowed the specimens in a science freezer for later analysis. Mogensen is helping doctors learn how microgravity affects cellular immune functions and to monitor the human immune system in space.
NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio continued his space physics activities for a second day as he replaced experiment gear inside the Cold Atom Lab. The research device chills atoms to near absolute zero creating almost no motion allowing scientists to study fundamental behaviors and quantum characteristics.
The station’s three cosmonauts turned their attention on Wednesday to the upkeep of hardware in the Roscosmos segment of the orbital lab. Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin spent the day replacing pumps and installing batteries on an Orlan spacesuit. Flight Engineer Konstantin Borisov videotaped himself becoming familiar with and exercising on the advanced resistive exercise device before checking out a laptop computer in the Nauka science module.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
Get weekly video highlights at: https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/
Get the latest from NASA delivered every week. Subscribe here: www.nasa.gov/subscribe
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Mark Garcia
