Head and Eye Health, Dragon Reboost Preps, and Emergency Drill Fill Crew Day
Preventing space-caused head and eye pressure impacts using specialized medical hardware was the top research theme aboard the International Space Station on Wednesday. The Expedition 73 residents also continued unpacking a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft and practiced an emergency drill aboard the orbital outpost.
Microgravity pulls a crew member’s body fluids toward the head leading to potential eye structure and vision changes. One common, easily visible symptom is called “puffy face” where an astronaut’s face appears swollen and redder. Researchers are looking at a unique thigh cuff worn on an astronaut’s leg that may counteract the headward fluid shifts reducing pressure on the head and eyes.
Flight Engineer Kimiya Yui of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) led the thigh cuff study on Wednesday testing the biomedical device on NASA Flight engineer Mike Fincke. Yui also scanned Fincke’s legs with the Ultrasound 2 device as electrodes on Fincke’s chest measured his cardiac activity. Doctors on the ground monitored gaining real time insights into astronaut health to learn how to protect crews on longer duration missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
NASA Flight Engineers Jonny Kim and Zena Cardman spent their shift focusing on cargo operations inside the SpaceX Dragon. The duo continued unpacking some of the several tons of gear including human research experiments and life support hardware.
Dragon also delivered an external payload, a reboost kit, or an independent propellant system located in the spacecraft’s trunk that will use two Draco engines to demonstrate the ability to maintain the orbital outpost’s altitude. On Tuesday, robotics controllers on the ground remotely commanded the Canadarm2 robotic arm to visually inspect the new propellant hardware before Dragon fires its Draco engines in September reboosting the station’s altitude.
All four astronauts also joined the orbiting lab’s three Roscosmos cosmonauts station Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Flight Engineers Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov and practiced procedures for a simulated emergency. The septet reviewed the steps they would use on a computer tablet in unlikely events such as an ammonia leak, a depressurization, or a fire. The crew also practiced emergency communication and coordination with mission controllers from around the world.
Before the emergency drill, Ryzhikov began his shift testing the performance of electronics hardware in the Zarya module before jogging on the Zvezda service module’s treadmill for a fitness evaluation. Zubritsky set up multispectral imaging gear in a station window and photographed areas of western Africa. Platonov started his day downloading imagery of Central Asia captured automatically during the crew’s sleep shift. Afterward, he checked Roscosmos life support systems and collected station air samples to analyze for trace contaminants such as carbon dioxide and ammonia to ensure a safe breathable environment.
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
