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Space Botany and Spacewalk Preps Wrap Up Work Week

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Space Botany and Spacewalk Preps Wrap Up Work Week

Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko is pictured in December of 2018 during a spacewalk to inspect a Soyuz crew ship.
Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko is pictured in December of 2018 during a spacewalk to inspect a Soyuz crew ship.

Space botany and CubeSats were the dominant research theme Friday as the Expedition 64 crew looks ahead to its first spacewalk in November.

NASA and its international partners are exploring ways to sustain healthy crews on space missions farther away from Earth. Growing food on spacecraft and space habitats is critical if astronauts are going to successfully explore the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Flight Engineer Kate Rubins, who was also a scientist before being recruited as a NASA astronaut, put on her green thumb today and installed new components inside the Advanced Plant Habitat. The botany research gear resides in Europe’s Columbus laboratory module and allows scientists to observe how plants grow and thrive in microgravity.

Rubins also spent some time Friday reviewing an upcoming CubeSat deployment that will take place outside Japan’s Kibo laboratory module. She will be readying several tiny satellites that will provide insights into oceanography, weather, ship and aircraft tracking, as well as GPS and satellite communication technologies.

Two cosmonauts are getting ready for a spacewalk targeted for Nov. 18 on the outside of the International Space Station’s Russian segment. Commander Sergey Ryzhikov joined Flight Engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov on Friday and began setting up the Pirs docking compartment where they will stage their tools and suit up for the planned six-hour excursion. The duo will be primarily be servicing external station hardware and science experiments during their mission’s first spacewalk.

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Mark Garcia

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Today’s Research Looks at Physics and Exercise for Earth, Space Benefits

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Today’s Research Looks at Physics and Exercise for Earth, Space Benefits

Hurricane Zeta was pictured from the International Space Station as the category two storm churned in the Gulf of Mexico nearing Louisiana.
Hurricane Zeta was pictured from the International Space Station as the category two storm churned in the Gulf of Mexico nearing Louisiana.

The three-member Expedition 64 crew is helping scientists understand how to keep astronauts healthy and maintain spacecraft systems on long-term exploration missions. The trio aboard the International Space Station also cleaned lab ventilation systems and worked on orbital plumbing tasks.

Flight Engineer Kate Rubins of NASA had a regularly scheduled health check up this morning and measured her temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and respiratory rate. Afterward, she serviced computer components that support the European Physiology Module which enables neuroscientific, cardiovascular, and physiological studies.

Rubins then spent the rest of the afternoon in the U.S. Destiny laboratory module installing fluid physics hardware inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox. The gear is for the Drop Vibration study that may provide engineers insights into designing advanced spacecraft systems and fabricating semiconductors on Earth.

Research into space exercise is ongoing inside the station as doctors around the world study how to keep crew members in good shape while living and working in weightlessness. Once again, Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Flight Engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov attached variety of sensors to themselves and worked out Thursday morning providing insights into how their bodies react to physical activities in space.

Ryzhikov then moved on to Russian plumbing work and transferred urine from the station into tanks located on the Progress 76 resupply ship. Kud-Sverchkov was in the Zvezda service module during the afternoon working preventive maintenance on the ventilation system’s fans and filters.

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Mark Garcia

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