The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on National Aerospace Week, hosted by Aerospace Industries Sept. 13-17. This week recognizes innovations from aerospace manufacturers, suppliers, and workforce.
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NASA has selected five U.S. companies to help the agency enable a steady pace of crewed trips to the lunar surface under the agency’s Artemis program.
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Two International Space Station crew members have had their stay onboard the orbiting lab extended to nearly a year. Meanwhile, space biology and life support maintenance kept the Expedition 65 crew busy on Tuesday.
With the plans for Russian spaceflight participants to visit the space station as part of the Soyuz MS-19 crew in October 2021, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov will remain aboard the station until March 2022. Upon return to Earth, Vande Hei will hold the record for longest single spaceflight for an American.
A potential benefit to this extension is NASA gaining deeper insight into how the human body adapts to life in microgravity for longer periods of time. This research helps prepare for Artemis missions to the Moon and eventually long-duration missions to Mars, as well as provides critical opportunities for additional research to be conducted aboard the station that can benefit life on Earth.
Rodents living on the station will soon be studied to understand how microgravity affects a variety of biological systems and processes. NASA Flight Engineers Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough began their day Tuesday training for the Rodent Research-1 Demonstration (RR-D1) experiment that will take place inside the Kibo laboratory module.
Afterward, Commander Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency joined Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) and took their turn studying for the upcoming RR-D1 study. The rodents will live in JAXA’s Mouse Habitat Unit and the experiment will be housed inside Kibo’s Life Science Glovebox. The biology study specifically aims to understand how weightlessness impacts normal skin function and wound healing.
Vande Hei, with assistance from Kimbrough, removed support components today that kept a new carbon dioxide (CO2) scrubber attached to the SpaceX Cargo Dragon spaceship during its flight to the station last month. The device that cleans the station’s atmosphere of CO2 will soon be installed in the U.S. Destiny laboratory module.
Dubrov and fellow cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy are still reconfiguring the station’s Russian segment following their two spacewalks on Sept. 3 and Sept. 9. The duo also took turns wearing heart monitoring gear. Dubrov then began setting up a laptop computer and a European robotic arm controller inside the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.
Mark Garcia
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In this image, NASA astronaut and SpaceX Crew-3 Commander Raja Chari trains aboard the ing session at SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in Hawthorns, California.
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The Expedition 65 crew is back on microgravity research aboard the International Space Station today after kicking off September with three spacewalks in less than two weeks.
International astronauts Akihiko Hoshide and Thomas Pesquet relaxed Monday morning following their six-hour and 54-minute spacewalk on Sunday to install a modification kit on the station’s Port-4 (P4) truss structure. The Commander from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) then joined the ESA (European Space Agency) Flight Engineer for standard health checks that take place after the strenuous spacewalks.
Afterward, Hoshide swabbed and collected microbe samples from station surfaces for incubation and analysis back on Earth. Pesquet also collected microbe samples from the station’s atmosphere for observation on petri dishes.
NASA Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Megan McArthur both relaxed on Monday morning having assisted spacewalkers Hoshide and Pesquet throughout the day on Sunday. Vande Hei then moved on and swapped and cleaned components for the ACE-T-11 physics study that is exploring space manufacturing techniques. McArthur replaced fuel bottles inside the Combustion Integrated Rack and later cleaned up debris in the orbiting lab’s Plant Habitat housing Hatch Green chiles growing for the Plant Habitat-04 space crop experiment.
Working throughout Monday inside the Kibo laboratory module, NASA Flight Engineer Shane Kimbrough began setting up hardware and trained for the newest rodent research experiment. Mice, delivered on the recent SpaceX Cargo Dragon mission, will soon be observed inside Kibo’s Life Science Glovebox to understand how microgravity affects the healing process.
Cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov continue cleaning up in the station’s Russian segment following their spacewalks on Sept. 3 and Sept. 9 to configure the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module for science operations. The duo from Roscosmos also had time for life support maintenance and cargo transfers from the Progress 78 resupply ship today.
Norah Moran
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