Engineers on the Roscosmos Mission Management Heart proceed to guage a coolant leak from its Progress 82 cargo spacecraft recognized on Feb. 11. The cargo spacecraft has been docked to the station’s Poisk module since October 2022. NASA has been helping Roscosmos in gathering imagery of the Progress 82 utilizing the Canadarm-2.
The launch date of the uncrewed Soyuz MS-23 alternative spacecraft to the Worldwide Area Station is beneath evaluate. The Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft was slated to launch to the Worldwide Area Station on Sunday, Feb. 19, to exchange the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft after it suffered its personal exterior coolant loop leak in December. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin arrived on the area station aboard MS-22 in October, and are actually scheduled to return to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft later this 12 months.
Roscosmos engineers proceed to analyze the reason for coolant loss from each the Progress 82 spacecraft and the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft. The crew is constant with regular area station operations and scientific analysis.
The seven residents that make up the Expedition 68 crew have been busy midweek aboard the area station. The orbital septet labored its means by means of a bunch of area science, cargo operations, and lab upkeep.
The station scientists on Wednesday explored a variety of microgravity’s results on people and physics to know the long-term implications of residing and dealing in area. NASA and its worldwide companions proceed planning missions to the Moon, Mars, and past, that can require astronauts to maintain themselves with much less help from flight controllers and visiting cargo missions.
NASA Flight Engineer Josh Cassada strapped himself to a specialised system and laid down contained in the Columbus laboratory module on Wednesday. He then manipulated a controller in response to pre-programmed stimuli as a pc and video cameras recorded his responses. Researchers will use the info to know how astronauts regulate their grip pressure and transfer their arms when manipulating objects in microgravity.
Cassada additionally took turns all through Wednesday with fellow flight engineers Nicole Mann of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Company (JAXA) for a periodic well being examination. The trio labored within the Future laboratory module measuring the important indicators together with temperature, blood strain, pulse, and respiratory price. The information was recorded into a pc pill utilizing wearable sensors then downloaded to medical doctors on Earth. Wakata additionally continued packing the Cygnus area freighter with trash and out of date {hardware} forward its eventual departure.
Rubio changed {hardware} elements and experiment samples contained in the Combustion Built-in Rack for an area hearth investigation. That examine explores gas temperatures in microgravity and the way it impacts supplies flammability. Outcomes could inform superior hearth suppression strategies for area missions in addition to Earth-bound amenities.
The orbital outpost’s three cosmonauts stored up their contingent of analysis operations and upkeep actions as effectively. Prokopyev explored piloting strategies a future crew member would possibly use to manage a spacecraft or a robotic on planetary missions. Petelin studied the way to preserve sterile circumstances in area throughout organic analysis and explored how worldwide crews and mission controllers can communication higher. Lastly, Flight Engineer Anna Kikina targeted her day on electronics and battery upkeep earlier than configuring a student-controlled Earth commentary digicam.
Study extra about station actions by following the area station weblog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, in addition to the ISS Fb and ISS Instagram accounts.
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