Station Crew Ends Week with Half-Shift Filled with Space Research
The Expedition 73 crew wrapped up the week with another light duty day working half a shift filled with vein scans, a pharmaceutical study, and International Space Station upkeep.
NASA Flight Engineer Nichole Ayers kicked off her day with station Commander Takuya Onishi from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) taking turns operating the Ultrasound 2 device and scanning each other’s neck, shoulder, and leg veins. Afterward, Ayers handed over the biomedical hardware to NASA Flight Engineer Anne McClain who scanned the veins of Roscosmos Flight Engineer Kirill Peskov. Doctors on the ground monitored the regularly scheduled scans in real time checking for potential blood clots arising due to blood pooling toward a crew member’s upper body in microgravity.
Onishi and McClain then spent some time on different maintenance duties in the Quest airlock. Onishi observed, photographed, and documented the condition and location of a variety of spacewalking tools, while McClain transferred wastewater collected from a spacesuit into a contingency water container bag.
NASA Flight Engineer Jonny Kim began his shift inside Quest searching for and locating a specialized socket that will be used on a future spacewalk. Next, he worked inside the Destiny laboratory module installing hardware and setting up samples inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox to explore the behavior of amyloids, or protein deposits that affects organs and tissues, in weightlessness. Results may lead to a better understanding and newer treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and promote space commercialization opportunities.
Peskov began his shift in the orbital outpost’s Roscosmos segment and attached himself to a device that applies a known force to a crew member and uses the resulting acceleration to accurately calculate mass. After his vein scans, Peskov worked in the Zarya module and cleaned life support equipment and checked lighting systems.
Veteran space station resident and cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov spent his half-day in Zarya organizing electronics hardware to create more stowage space. First-time space-flyer cosmononaut Alexey Zubritskiy transferred fluids from the station into the Progress 90 cargo craft’s tanks then copied science data collected from a protein crystallization investigation to a flash drive.
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.
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Mark A. Garcia
