Payload Maintenance and Relocation, Robotics Session to End Week

NASA astronaut and Expedition 69 Flight Engineer Stephen Bowen installs student-made hardware next to the Destiny laboratory module's Microgravity Science Glovebox to test a platform that improves the stability of cameras used to track targets on the ground or take images and video inside the International Space Station.
NASA astronaut and Expedition 69 Flight Engineer Stephen Bowen installs student-made hardware next to the Destiny laboratory module’s Microgravity Science Glovebox to test a platform that improves the stability of cameras used to track targets on the ground or take images and video inside the International Space Station.

It’s a jam-packed Friday for the Expedition 69 crew aboard the International Space Station. Ahead of their off-duty weekend, the crew moved payloads and stowage and two astronauts completed a second robotics practice session in preparation for next week’s cargo delivery.

NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg started his day collecting additional samples for the Standard Measures investigation. He then moved into the Tranquility module to clean out stowage. Later in the morning, United Arab Emirates (UAE) Flight Engineer Sultan Alneyadi joined Hoburg to assist with unstowing the NanoRacks External Platform from the NanoRacks Bishop Airlock.

Hoburg also fixed some ethernet cables at the Astrobee docking station in the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM). He was later joined by NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio in the afternoon to complete a second robotics practice session for the upcoming rendezvous and capture of the Cygnus cargo spacecraft next week. Cygnus is targeted to launch on Tuesday, August 1, marking Northrop Grumman’s 19th commercial resupply mission.

After the NanoRacks External Platform was removed, Rubio captured the payload and moved it to JEM. Additionally, he and NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen removed the Multi-Purpose Experiment Platform from the Kibo airlock to be stowed and Rubio later performed a visual inspection and video survey of the airlock.

Following yesterday’s troubleshooting of the Glovebox Freezer, Bowen inspected and checked connections once more today. He also replaced hardware in the BioFabrication Facility—a 3D printer that investigates the feasibility of printing organ-like tissues in microgravity. Bowen then moved into the Columbus Laboratory Module to set up Kubik 5 and 6 hardware, designed for self-contained, automatic microgravity investigations aboard the orbital lab. Near the end of his day, Bowen troubleshooted the Fluids Integrated Rack—a fluid physics research facility.

Commander Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos ran the 3D printer in the Zvezda service module while Flight Engineer Andrey Fedyaev cleaned smoke detectors in the Zarya module and completed some computer maintenance. Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin once again donned the sensor-pack cap to practice piloting techniques that explore how spacefarers may react and control spacecraft on future planetary missions.

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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