Cosmonauts and Astronauts Ramping Up for a Pair of Spacewalks

Cosmonauts (from top) Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin work on an Orlan spacesuit inside the space station's Poisk module.
Cosmonauts (from top) Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin work on an Orlan spacesuit inside the space station’s Poisk module.

Two spacewalks are planned in the next several days outside the International Space Station for the Expedition 68 crew. Meanwhile, science was still ongoing at the beginning of the week with space botany and physics work aboard the orbiting lab.

On Wednesday at 9:20 p.m. EST, Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin will exit the Poisk module’s airlock in their Orlan spacesuits. They will spend about seven hours transferring a radiator from the Rassvet module to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. Flight Engineer Anna Kikina will be inside Nauka supporting the spacewalking duo by operating the European robotic arm.

Prokopyev and Petelin spent Monday getting their suits and the Poisk airlock ready for Wednesday’s excursion. The duo configured their spacesuits’ life support and communications components then collected and organized the tools they will use during the spacewalk. They also closed the hatch and performed leak checks on the ISS Progress 82 resupply ship which is docked to Poisk just outside its airlock. Kikina primarily spent the day on life support and ventilation maintenance.

NASA Flight Engineers Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio will have their spacewalk together on Monday, Dec. 19. They will install their second roll-out solar array, or International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA), on the Port-4 (P4) truss segment. They installed their first iROSA on Dec. 3 on the station’s Starboard-4 truss segment opposite of the P4.

The two NASA astronauts spent some time on Monday reviewing the iROSA installation procedures and discussing the spacewalk with mission controllers on the ground. Flight Engineers Nicole Mann of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) also participated in the review and the ground conference and will assist the two spacewalkers next week.

Cassada kicked off the workweek watering dwarf tomatoes growing inside the Veggie space botany facility for the Veg-05 experiment. Wakata transported physics research hardware from the Cygnus resupply ship to a research rack inside the Kibo laboratory module. Rubio collected carbon dioxide samples from life support hardware. Mann also assisted the cosmonauts helping them get their tools ready for Wednesday’s spacewalk.

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: http://jscfeatures.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

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



from Space Station https://ift.tt/ZMiUDyw

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Station Wraps Busy Week Before Cygnus Cargo Mission Launches

Image
This high exposure photograph from the International Space Station shows Earth’s atmospheric glow and a starry sky as the orbital complex soared above the Pacific Ocean. The Expedition 70 crew is looking ahead to the arrival of a U.S. cargo craft due to arrive at the International Space Station next week. Meanwhile, the Axiom Space 3 (Ax-3) crew finished its first week in orbit with a busy schedule of research, education, and media activities. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo craft will take its first ride atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket when it lifts off at 12:29 p.m. EST on Monday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The private space freighter will be carrying over 8,200 pounds of science experiments, crew supplies, and lab hardware to the orbiting outpost. NASA Flight Engineer Jasmin Moghbeli is due to capture Cygnus with the Canadarm 2 robotic arm at 3:35 a.m. on Wednesday. She will be on duty that morning along with fellow NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara who will monitor Cygn...
Read more

Dream Chaser Undergoes Testing at NASA Test Facility in Ohio

Image
NASA and Sierra Space are making progress on the first flight of the company’s Dream Chaser spacecraft to the International Space Station. The uncrewed cargo spaceplane is planned to launch its demonstration mission in 2024 to the orbital complex as part of NASA’s commercial resupply services. Credit: Sierra Space/Shay Saldana NASA and Sierra Space are preparing for the first flight of the company’s Dream Chaser spacecraft to the International Space Station. Dream Chaser and its companion cargo module, called Shooting Star, arrived at NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio, for environmental testing, scheduled to start in mid-December, ahead of its first flight, scheduled for the first half of 2024. The Neil Armstrong Test Facility, part of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, is home to multiple test facilities, including the Space Environments Complex and the In-Space Propulsion Facility, both stops for Dream Chaser. The complex is home to the Mechanical Vib...
Read more

Crew Dragon Suit Checks as Station Begins Orbital Reboosts

Image
This long-exposure photograph from the space station reveals the Milky Way glittering above a bright but exaggerated atmospheric glow blanketing the Earth’s horizon. The Expedition 63 crew checked out SpaceX Crew Dragon suits today and stayed busy with a full slate of space research. The International Space Station also completed the first of three orbital reboosts to get ready for the next crew mission in October. Flight Engineers Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken inspected the suits they will wear when they return to Earth aboard the Crew Dragon spaceship. The duo tried on their suits for a fit check and ensured the components are in good condition. They are scheduled to depart the station on Saturday and splashdown the following day. NASA TV will cover all the departure activities live. The homebound-duo started the day replacing environmental control system (ECS) hardware aboard the orbiting lab. That work required temporarily removing a plant habitat from the Unity module to...
Read more