Ax-4 Orbiting Toward Station as Expedition 73 Studies Pharma, Blood Pressure
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying four Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) crew members is orbiting Earth and on its way to the International Space Station after launching from Kennedy Space Center at 2:31 a.m. EDT on Wednesday. Dragon is carrying Ax-4 Commander Peggy Whitson, Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla, and Mission Specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu and will dock to the Harmony module’s space-facing port at 7 a.m. on Thursday with NASA+ coverage beginning at 5 a.m.
NASA Flight Engineers Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers will be on duty at the beginning of their shift monitoring Dragon during its automated approach and rendezvous maneuvers. After docking, the Ax-4 private astronauts will greet the seven Expedition 73 crewmates, call down to Earth for welcoming remarks, then participate in a safety briefing with the station residents.
Meanwhile, McClain and Ayers, including the rest of the station crew, had a normal shift on Wednesday keeping up microgravity research and lab maintenance. McClain configured research hardware and processed samples in the Destiny laboratory module then photographed her work for analysis on the ground. Ayers once again tended to a fluid physics study in the Microgravity Science Glovebox that may benefit pharmaceutical manufacturing techniques and 3D printing in space.
NASA Flight Engineer Jonny Kim partnered together with station Commander Takuya Onishi from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and tested a specialized thigh cuff that may reverse space-caused fluid shifts toward a crew member’s upper body. The duo took turns wearing the biomedical device in the Columbus laboratory module as Ultrasound 2 scans and blood pressure checks measured cardiac output, heart rate, and more to determine the effectiveness of the thigh cuff to protect crew health.
Veteran cosmonaut and three-time space station visitor Sergey Ryzhikov began his shift in the Zvezda service module replacing computer components before wrapping up his day charging science experiment batteries and activating an Earth observation camera. Flight Engineer Alexey Zubritskiy spent his day reorganizing cargo inside the Nauka science module and stowing trash and discarded gear inside the Progress 90 cargo craft due to depart the Poisk module next week. Flight Engineer Kirill Peskov cleaned Nauka ventilation systems then checked radiation exposure data the station experiences while orbiting Earth.
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
