NASA’s commercial partner Northrop Grumman is scheduled to launch its Antares rocket carrying its Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the international Space Station at 4:46 p.m. EDT Wednesday, April 17.
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The Expedition 59 crew continued more brain and breath research aboard the International Space Station today. Along with a variety of other life science activities, the crew also filmed a virtual reality experience inside the station.
NASA is planning longer human missions, farther out in space and having a safe spacecraft atmosphere to breathe in is vitally important. Flight Engineers Nick Hague and Anne McClain spent most of Thursday helping doctors understand what exacerbates and how to alleviate the inflammation of an astronaut’s airways. The duo worked in the Quest airlock measuring and sampling their breath at a reduced air pressure.
Astronaut Christina Koch carried on today with more brain research then closed out the neuroscientific experiment. She worked with human research gear including the Cardiolab Portable Doppler and the Continuous Blood Pressure Device. The instruments measure blood pressure waveforms in the arteries and blood flow velocity to the brain. The data will help doctors understand how the brain regulates blood flow in microgravity.
Koch later videotaped herself in virtual reality for a film depicting life on the station. David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency set up the 360° camera inside the Unity module that links the station’s U.S. segment with the Russian segment. Saint-Jacques later collected his urine samples for stowage in a science freezer and later analysis.
Cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Alexey Ovchinin also explored an array of space phenomena today for the Roscosmos science program. The duo researched cardiovascular activity and enzyme reactions to give doctors better insight into crew health. The cosmonauts also photographed Earth landmarks to help predict catastrophes and studied how space crews relate to mission controllers on the ground.
Mark Garcia
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NASA has selected SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, the first-ever mission to demonstrate the capability to deflect an asteroid by colliding a spacecraft with it at high speed – a technique known as a kinetic impactor.
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Results from NASA’s landmark Twins Study, which took place from 2015-2016, were published Thursday in Science. The integrated paper — encompassing work from 10 research teams — reveals some interesting, surprising and reassuring data about how one human body adapted to — and recovered from — the extreme environment of space.
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The Expedition 59 crew is now training to capture a U.S. cargo ship when it arrives at the International Space Station next week. The orbital lab residents are also busy researching how living in space affects the human mind and body.
Fresh off their spacewalk Monday, astronauts Anne McClain and David Saint-Jacques are now practicing to capture Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus space freighter with the Canadarm2 robotic arm. McClain will be at the robotics workstation in the cupola April 19 and command the Canadarm2 to capture Cygnus around 5:30 a.m. EDT. Saint-Jacques will back her up while Flight Engineer Nick Hague monitors Cygnus’ systems during its approach and rendezvous. The commercial cargo craft is due to launch April 17 at 4:46 p.m. from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Hague started his day with more brain research in the Japanese Kibo lab module. The NASA astronaut used a Doppler device to record his arterial blood flow waveforms. The data will help doctors understand how the brain regulates blood flow in microgravity.
The astronauts also researched how the station’s atmosphere affects breathing. The experiment studies how dust, particles and exhaled breath inflames a crewmember’s airways. Observations may reveal conditions that exacerbate or alleviate airway inflammation influencing future space missions.
SpaceX has announced April 26 as the launch date for its next Dragon cargo mission. The private space freighter will blast off from Cape Canaveral in Florida arriving at the station April 28. This time Saint-Jacques will lead the robotics capture activities while Hague backs him up.
Mark Garcia
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