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They’ve arrived! After an prolonged delay, the Axiom Mission-4 (Ax-4) crew flying aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Grace” pulled as much as the Worldwide House Station and docked, starting a two-week keep on the orbiting laboratory. In the meantime, science and upkeep work continued this week for the Expedition 73 crew.
Orbital commentary
In house, what goes up … does not actually matter to our brains.
“I believe one of the shocking or sudden issues is simply how shortly your mind figures out that up and down does not actually matter,” mentioned Nichole Ayers, Expedition 73 flight engineer, answering one of many questions the younger college students at P.S. 71 Forest Elementary College in Ridgewood, New York on Monday (June 23). “, on Earth, we have got gravity, and it pulls us down, and so we all know the place the ground is, however right here on the house station, any person might be the wrong way up, and you can be speaking to them like regular.”
It was at this level within the video downlink that fellow NASA astronaut Anne McClain flipped the wrong way up (in relation to Ayers’ orientation).
“, our treadmill is on the wall, so is our lifting machine. And so it is fairly typically that you just flip across the nook and somebody just isn’t precisely such as you would count on them to be, however your mind, after a pair weeks, simply type of goes, ‘Okay, we will do that.’ And you determine that you could undergo a module the wrong way up, you possibly can undergo a module doing a number of aileron rolls, and your physique is completely okay with that.”
Science standing
Among the many analysis that was carried out by the Expedition 73 crew aboard the house station this week was:
Thigh Cuff — Expedition 73 commander Takuya Onishi and flight engineer Jonny Kim took turns carrying tight cuff on their legs in an effort to vary the path of the fluids of their physique. Within the weightless atmosphere in house, fluids are likely to pool up within the head, which may have adverse results. The 2 astronauts, working contained in the European Columbus Laboratory, used an ultrasound system to watch the effectiveness of the cuff.
Ring Sheared Drop — Persevering with a multi-week fluids physics experiment, Nichole Ayers labored with an equipment mounted inside a microgravity glove field within the U.S. Future Laboratory to see if floor rigidity can be utilized to isolate liquids from their containers’ partitions. The analysis may result in developments in formulating prescribed drugs, amongst different purposes.
Bio-Analyzer — Anne McClain activated this system, which permits for the on-orbit qualification of mobile and molecular samples collected aboard the house station.
Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritskiy measured the stream by their massive and small blood vessels, whereas Kirill Peskov checked the radiation ranges on board the house station.
Station maintaining
The Expedition 73 crew additionally devoted time to sustaining the house station’s techniques, together with:
Day within the Life — Onishi, Kim and Ayers filmed coaching movies for future station crew members. They confirmed the place spacesuits and EVA instruments are saved within the Quest airlock, the place security tools is situated within the Concord, Kibo and Columbus modules and typical crew actions within the Tranquility module, Cupola and Leonardo everlasting multipurpose module (PMM).
Stowage house — Talking of the PMM, McClain and Onishi rearranged cargo within the station’s “storage closet,” with the intention of creating extra room for extra objects to be moved inside. They then documented their work in images for Mission Management to research.
Ryzhikov labored on the Russian phase’s Elektron oxygen generator and Zubritskiy swapped out air flow mud filters.
Astronaut exercise
After which there have been 11.
The Axiom Mission-4 crew arrived on the Worldwide House Station on Thursday, June 26, 2025. Commander Peggy Whitson, pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian House Analysis Group (ISRO) and mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of the European House Company (ESA) and Tibor Kapu of the Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) astronaut program have joined the Expedition 73 for a two-week keep.
The worldwide Ax-4 crew will set a report for essentially the most analysis carried out on an Axiom House mission thus far. They’ve with them greater than 60 experiments and expertise demos from 31 nations, together with the crew members’ nations, in addition to Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates.
Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4)
The fourth business mission to the Worldwide House Station as organized by Houston-based Axiom House noticed the arrival of the primary residents of India, Poland and Hungary aboard the orbiting outpost.
Led by Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who holds the report for essentially the most time in house by an American (and a girl worldwide), Shubhanshu “Shux” Shukla, Sławosz “Suave” Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu spent their first couple of days changing into accustomed to the structure of the station after docking on Thursday (June 26).
With the seven members of Expedition 73 already taking on the established sleep stations, the Ax-4 crew have arrange camp the place house was out there: Whitson within the Quest airlock, Shukla in Dragon, Uznański-Wiśniewski in Columbus and Kapu in Kibo.
By the numbers
As of Friday (June 27), there are 11 individuals aboard the Worldwide House Station: Expedition 73 commander Takuya Onishi of JAXA, Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers and Jonny Kim of NASA and Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky of Roscosmos, all flight engineers, in addition to Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) commander Peggy Whitson, pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian House Analysis Group (ISRO) and mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of the European House Company (ESA) and Tibor Kapu of the Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) astronaut program.
There are three docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX’s Dragon “Endurance” connected to the ahead port of the Concord module, Dragon “Grace” on the space-facing port of Concord and Roscosmos’ Soyuz MS-27 connected to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.
There are additionally two docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos’ Progess MS-29 (90P) connected to the space-facing port of the Poisk module and Progress MS-30 (91P) connected to the aft port of the Zvezda service module.
As of Friday, the house station has been constantly crewed for 24 years, 7 months and 26 days.
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