Crew Ends Week with Spacesuit Checks and Science, Lab Hardware Maintenance
Expedition 75 ended July stepping up preparations for the first of three spacewalks planned for the month of August. The International Space Station residents also wrapped up the week configuring combustion research and Earth imagery hardware while continuing lab maintenance.
NASA flight engineer Anil Menon tried on his spacesuit on Friday to get ready for his first career spacewalk planned for Thursday, Aug. 6. NASA flight engineer Jack Hathaway assisted Menon in the Quest airlock helping him verify the suit’s comfort, mobility, and functionality. The duo also cleaned the suit’s water-cooling loops that keep an astronaut comfortable while working in the extreme environment of space.
Menon later joined station commander Jessica Meir and reviewed procedures for the spacewalk that will see the duo spend about six-and-a-half hours building the platform upon which the orbital outpost’s seventh roll out solar array will be installed later this year to augment its power system. Meir will lead the spacewalk, her sixth since Oct. 18, 2019, when she conducted the first all-female spacewalk with NASA astronaut Christina Koch.
Flight engineer Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) spent her shift in the Kibo laboratory module working on scientific and life support gear. Adenot opened up the solid combustion experiment module, swapped samples, and vacuumed soot in the research device that safely observes how solid materials burn and self‑extinguish in microgravity. She also collected fluid samples from Kibo’s thermal system that will be analyzed for chemical composition, contaminants, and gases.
Roscosmos flight engineer Andrey Fedyaev worked in the Zvezda service module installing and testing Earth observation hardware that uses a wide range of wavelengths to capture detailed imagery of areas affected by catastrophic events. Fedyaev completed his shift updating software that supports the European robotic arm’s control console. Roscosmos flight engineers Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina partnered together at the end of the week taking inventory of station tools, office supplies, and personal items.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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Mark A. Garcia
