NASA has selected L3Harris Technologies Inc. of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Raytheon Company of El Segundo, California, for the Geostationary and Extended Orbits (GEO-XO) Imager (GXI) Phase A Study contracts.
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Four Expedition 64 astronauts are getting ready to move their SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle to another docking port on the International Space Station next week. The orbital residents also continued advanced research into space agriculture and the human nervous system.
Resilience, the docked commercial crew craft from SpaceX, will taxi four astronauts from the Harmony module’s forward-facing port to its zenith, or space-facing port, on Monday at 6:30 a.m. EDT. The autonomous relocation maneuver will take about 45 minutes with NASA TV beginning its live coverage at 6 a.m.
Crew-1 Commander Michael Hopkins is riding along with Pilot Victor Glover and Mission Specialists Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi. The quartet checked their Crew Dragon flight suits and communications gear during the afternoon. All four astronauts need to be on the vehicle in the unlikely event Resilience is unable to redock. This assures there aren’t more crewmembers on the station than seats available on docked crew ships.
Meanwhile, the station crew kept up its space botany work today testing hydroponics as a way to maintain and grow crops in microgravity. NASA Flight Engineer Kate Rubins kicked off her day with the Plant Water Management study as Hopkins took over the activities after lunch time.
Hopkins and Glover were also back in the Columbus laboratory module exploring how weightlessness affects their grip force and up/down movements. The experiment requires the astronauts to strap themselves in a specialized seat and perform a series of dexterous manipulation exercises. Observations could improve the design of spacecraft interfaces and offer deeper insights into the human nervous system in different gravity environments.
Walker was on Crew Medical Officer duties during the morning scanning Glover’s neck, shoulder and leg veins with the Ultrasound-2 device. She then spent the afternoon setting up alternate sleep accommodations ahead of the Expedition 65 crew arrival on April 9 when 10 people will be on the station for just over a week.
Station Commander Sergey Ryzhikov spent the day collecting water samples from Russian life support systems and checking smoke detectors. Roscosmos Flight Engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov cleaned ventilation systems and transferred water from the docked Progress 77 resupply ship.
Mark Garcia
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As a payload communications manager Penny J. Pettigrew spends most days in the Payload Operations Integration Center at Marshall Space Flight Center.
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Human research, botany and a technology demonstration were on the science schedule aboard the International Space Station today.
NASA Flight Engineer Shannon Walker was the Crew Medical Officer on Tuesday imaging the eyes of astronauts Michael Hopkins and Soichi Noguchi. Walker operated non-invasive imaging technology hardware to detect how microgravity impacts a crew member’s eyes and especially the retina.
Hopkins also joined Flight Engineer Victor Glover for an experiment investigating how astronauts manipulate objects and move around in weightlessness. The duo strapped themselves in a specialized seat inside the Columbus laboratory module for a series of tests exploring their grip force and up/down movements. Results could inform future spacecraft interfaces and provide new insights into the human nervous system.
NASA Flight Engineer Kate Rubins explored hydroponics today as way to support space agriculture for the Plant Water Management botany study. Noguchi tested a new optical device that beams down large amounts of data to Earth from outside the space station.
Expedition 64 Commander Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos worked on computer and life support maintenance throughout the day. Flight Engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov serviced video gear then photographed hardware on the outside of the Poisk mini-research module.
Mark Garcia
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Set to launch next year, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft will explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
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