Archivo de la etiqueta: spacestation

Foursome Targets Saturday for Return to Earth as Station Ops Continue

Four Expedition 68 crew members are nearing the end of their stay aboard the International Space Station this weekend. Their replacements are completing their first week aboard the orbital outpost and getting up to speed with life in space.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance with four crewmates is targeted to depart the space station at 2:05 a.m. EST on Saturday and return to Earth less than 24 hours later. NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada will command and pilot Endurance respectively flanked by Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Anna Kikina of Roscosmos. The foursome is due to splashdown off the coast of Florida at 9:19 p.m. on Saturday.

The quartet blasted off toward the orbiting lab as the SpaceX Crew-5 mission on Oct. 5, 2022, and docked to the Harmony module’s forward port on Oct. 6. A variety of crew ships and space freighters arrived and departed, numerous spacewalks were conducted, and a multitude of advanced space research took place during Crew-5’s five-month-long stay in space.

The station’s newest crew members are several days into their orbital residency after their arrival on March 3, as the SpaceX Crew-6 mission. The new flight engineers, Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg of NASA, Sultan Alneyadi of UAE (United Arab Emirates), and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos, have already begun a variety of space research and lab maintenance activities.

The four new station residents have started exploring how microgravity affects the human body and picked a small tomato crop growing for a space agriculture study. They also spent Thursday afternoon familiarizing themselves with space station hardware and emergency equipment located throughout the space lab.

Three other space station residents, Commander Sergey Prokopyev, Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin, both from Roscosmos, and NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio, have been living in space since Sept. 21. The trio spent the day stowing biological samples in a science freezer, packing cargo inside the Soyuz MS-22 spaceship, and servicing life support components. They will continue their station mission until later this year and return home inside the Soyuz MS-23 crew ship.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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Mark Garcia

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Advanced Science Work Under Way Before Crew Departure

The four new Expedition 68 crew members are getting used to life in space while four other crewmates are preparing to go home this month. Also, today’s research includes replacing fuel bottles in the Combustion Integrated Rack and collecting samples for the Food Physiology and Host Pathogen experiment.

Flight engineers Frank Rubio of NASA and Dmitri Petelin of Roscosmos removed the CIR rack and replaced it with a new high-percentage oxygen bottle. The Combustion Integration Rack is used to perform combustion investigations in microgravity, and results could improve understanding of early fire growth behavior and help determine the best fire suppression techniques, improving crew safety in future space facilities.

Rubio also participated in the Food Physiology experiment. A variety of samples are collected and then placed in cold stowage to document the effect of dietary improvements on human physiology and the ability of those improvements to enhance adaptation to spaceflight.

Samples were also collected for the Host Pathogen experiment. This study identifies the spaceflight-induced changes in the human microbiome that causes a decrease in immune function and an increase in microbial virulence. Blood and saliva samples from crew members are collected before, during, and after spaceflight, to assess the clinical risks of infectious microbes and to develop countermeasures that restore immune function in astronauts.

The new Endeavour crew is continuing to adjust to life in orbit, while the Endurance Crew is preparing for its return to earth by cleaning, completing stowage and inventory tasks, and preparing personal items for return.

NASA and SpaceX continue to evaluate the weather for the return of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission from the International Space Station. Teams conducted a weather briefing overnight and decided to waive off the initial undocking opportunity for early Thursday, March 9, due to high winds at the splashdown sites. Teams currently target undocking for no earlier than Thursday evening, pending weather. The Crew-5 Dragon spacecraft remains healthy docked to the station and is configured for nominal return operations once weather conditions are favorable.

The space station is orbiting slightly higher today after the docked ISS Progress 83 cargo craft fired its engines for five minutes and 17 seconds this afternoon. The new orbital altitude readies the unoccupied Soyuz MS-22 crew ship for its upcoming departure following a coolant leak that was detected in December of last year.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

Get weekly video highlights at: https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videupdate/

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Mark Garcia

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Crew of 11 Staying Focused on Advanced Space Research

The International Space Station’s 11 residents are comprised of three individual crews that arrived at the orbital outpost on three different crew ships. The most recent crew to arrive was SpaceX Crew-6 docking on Friday at 1:40 a.m. EST in the Crew Dragon Endeavour vehicle.

The four Crew-6 members are now Expedition 68 flight engineers embarking on a six-month space research mission. The new station crewmates are Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg of NASA along with Sultan Alneyadi of UAE (United Arab Emirates) and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos. They are familiarizing themselves with station operations, systems, and emergency procedures.

The new quartet is also beginning standard science and maintenance activities. Bowen and Hoburg started a new experiment today conducting ultrasound scans and collecting blood pressure measurements to learn how an astronaut’s eyes, brain, and blood vessels change during a space mission. Alneyadi harvested tomatoes collecting them for both scientific analysis and crew consumption for the Veg-05 space botany study. Fedyaev wore a sensor-packed cap and practiced futuristic piloting techniques on a computer a crew member might use to control spacecraft or robots on planetary missions.

Another four crewmates are due to complete their station mission this month. Astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, and Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Roscosmos, launched into space on Oct. 5 from the Kennedy Space Center and joined the Expedition 68 crew after docking on Oct. 6.

The homebound foursome is handing over their responsibilities to the station’s newest crew members as well as gathering cargo and personal items to take back to Earth inside Endurance. Mann and Wakata are also finalizing science work as they serviced a variety of research samples and replaced experiment hardware today. Mann also joined Cassada and tested and changed out orbital plumbing components. Kikina tested a specialized suit that may help crew members adapt quicker to the return to Earth’s gravity.

Station Commander Sergey Prokopyev has been on the orbiting lab since arriving on Sept. 21 aboard the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship with flight engineers Dmitri Petelin of Roscosmos and Frank Rubio of NASA. Prokopyev and Petelin spent Tuesday maintaining various electrical and life support systems. Rubio worked on human research throughout the day swapping samples in science freezers, photographing Bowen and Hoburg during their experiment work, and finally collecting blood specimens for stowage and analysis. The station trio are continuing their stay in space and will return to Earth later this year aboard the Soyuz MS-23 crew ship.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

Get weekly video highlights at: https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videupdate/

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Mark Garcia

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Expanded Station Crew Works Together Before Quartet Departure

The newly-expanded International Space Station crew of 11 members kicked off a busy work week today conducting a variety of research and visiting vehicle activities. Meanwhile, four Expedition 68 crew members are also getting ready to complete their mission and return to Earth.

New station residents Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg of NASA, who commanded and piloted the SpaceX Crew-6 mission respectively, reviewed docked Crew Dragon procedures first thing on Monday. The duo, along Crew-6 mission specialist Sultan Alneyadi of UAE (United Arab Emirates) and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos, automatically docked Crew Dragon Endeavour to the Harmony module’s space-facing port at 1:40 a.m. EST on Friday. The quartet will live and work aboard the orbital outpost for six months.

The four newest crew members continue getting up to speed with life on orbit familiarizing themselves with space station operations and systems. The foursome also spent Monday installing new space biology hardware, replacing electronic components, and updating emergency procedures for the expanded crew.

The orbiting crew will soon return to a seven-member status when four station residents finalize their mission that began last year. Flight Engineers Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, along with Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Anna Kikina of Roscosmos, launched to the station as the SpaceX Crew-5 mission on Oct. 5 joining the Expedition 68 crew one day later. All four homebound crew members have begun their handover activities. They will enter the Crew Dragon Endurance, undock from the Harmony module’s forward port, then splash down off the coast of Florida on a soon-to-be-announced date.

The next Dragon mission to the station will be the SpaceX CRS-27 resupply mission scheduled for March 14 at 8:30 p.m. EDT. The Dragon cargo craft will automatically dock about 24 hours later to the Harmony port vacated by the Crew Dragon Endurance when it undocks a few days earlier.

The space station’s other three crewmates, Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin of Roscosmos, and NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio joined each other and practiced on a computer the procedures for returning to Earth inside the Soyuz MS-23 crew ship. Rubio earlier had removed his seat liner from the Crew Dragon Endurance and installed it inside the MS-23. Prokopyev and Petelin also conducted tests inside the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship that will return to Earth unoccupied in late March.

The orbital outpost maneuvered out of the way of an Earth observation satellite early Monday. The docked ISS Progress 83 resupply ship fired its engines for just over six minutes slightly raising the station’s orbit to avoid the approaching satellite. The new orbital trajectory will not impact the upcoming departure of the Crew-5 mission.

NASA is considering extending the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS)-2 contracts to ensure continuous cargo resupply services to the International Space Station. For more information, visit https://www.sam.gov.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

Get weekly video highlights at: https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videupdate/

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Mark Garcia

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Expedition 68 Welcomes Crew-6 Members Aboard Station

NASA astronauts, Mission Commander Stephen Bowen and Pilot Woody Hoburg, along with UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev aboard the SpaceX Dragon, named Endeavour, have arrived at the International Space Station.

Crew-6 joins the Expedition 68 crew of NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Nicole Mann, and Josh Cassada, as well as Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin, and Anna Kikina.

The crew members first opened the hatch between the space station and the pressurized mating adapter at 3:45 a.m. EST then opened the hatch to Dragon.

More details about the Crew-6 mission can be found by following the Crew-6 blog, the commercial crew blog, @commercial_crew on Twitter, and commercial crew on Facebook.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

Get weekly video highlights at: https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videupdate/

Get the latest from NASA delivered every week. Subscribe here: www.nasa.gov/subscribe

Get The Details…

Mark Garcia

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