The Expedition 73 crew continued their science analysis and upkeep work aboard the Worldwide Area Station this week, regardless of the beginning of a U.S. authorities shutdown again on Earth.
Orbital remark
Whats up from house!
“At present was a busy day as properly, however I used to be capable of take some pictures in between exercises,” wrote Kimiya Yui on social media on Thursday (Oct. 2). “About 25 minutes after taking pictures close to the Mediterranean, we handed over Japan’s Honshu. Those that noticed the ISS yesterday night and waved to it, ended up waving to me whereas I used to be doing energy coaching searching the window.”
Science standing
Among the many analysis that was performed by the Expedition 73 crew aboard the house station this week was:
SHRIMP — NASA astronaut Jonny Kim activated the State-of-the-art Humidity Removing in Microgravity Payload, a tool designed to extract moisture from a spacecraft’s environment for reuse.
Warmth Switch Host 2 — Mike Fincke, additionally with NASA, put in the brand new experiment to review condensation when gasoline turns to liquid, doubtlessly including to the event of thermal techniques for crewed spacecraft despatched on deep-space missions.
ADvanced Area Experiment Processor-4 — NASA flight engineer Zena Cardman put in new pattern cassettes for a research supporting the manufacturing of medicines (medicine or prescription drugs) in microgravity.
Station maintaining
The Expedition 73 crewmates additionally took half in actions to take care of the house station’s techniques and put together for future analysis.
Fluid Science Laboratory — Mike Fincke and Jonny Kim frolicked configuring this European Area Company (ESA) equipment for researching the physics of fluid in microgravity. They modified out electrical cables, introduced collectively parts and mounted foam coarsening samples.
Seize Bag Demo — Fincke additionally put in the TransAstra Fly Lure Seize Bag Demo into the NanoRacks Bishop airlock, forward of exams to point out its functionality to stay open, shut and keep hermetic within the weightless setting of house. The bag could also be a technique of capturing and disposing of house particles.
Electrostatic Levitation Furnace — JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui modified out specimen dealing with {hardware} and configured cables for this machine, which makes use of lasers to warmth supplies to ultra-high temperatures whereas information is collected in regards to the thermo-physical properties of the samples.
By the numbers
As of Friday (Oct. 3), there are 7 folks aboard the Worldwide Area Station: Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos; fellow cosmonauts Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA; and Kimiya Yui of JAXA, all flight engineers.
There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX‘s Dragon “Endeavour” connected to the zenith port of the Concord module and Roscosmos’ Soyuz MS-27 connected to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.
There are 4 docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos’ Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module and Progress M-32 (93P) docked to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, SpaceX’s CRS-33 Dragon spacecraft docked to the ahead port of Concord Node 2 and Northrop Grumman’s NG-23 Cygnus XL, the “SS William C. ‘Willie’ McCool,” berthed to the Unity node.
As of Friday, the house station has been constantly crewed for 24 years, 11 months and 1 day.
