The Expedition 67 crew spent Thursday servicing a variety of advanced space biology and human research hardware to learn how different organisms adapt to long-term microgravity.
NASA Flight Engineer Kjell Lindgren kicked off Thursday morning swapping centrifuges inside the Kibo laboratory module’s Cell Biology Experiment Facility (CBEF). The CBEF is an incubator that can house cells and plants while generating artificial gravity between 0.1 and 2.0 G during gravity contrast experiments. The life science research device is part of the Saibo Experiment Rack that houses science, power, and data transmission facilities.
NASA Flight Engineers Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins worked throughout Thursday on cargo operations inside the Cygnus space freighter ahead of its departure targeted for the end of June. Lindgren finalized the day’s cargo work in the afternoon before cleaning and inspecting hatch mechanisms in the station’s U.S. segment. Watkins also wrapped up her test session with the AstroRad radiation protection vest and completed a survey to document the specialized vest’s comfort and mobility.
ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti logged her food and beverage intake in a database in the morning for the NutrISS study that monitors an astronaut’s body composition in weightlessness. She later trained for Astrobee operations before joining Watkins to audit systems inside the Tranquility module. At the end of the day, she participated in the U.S. hatch inspections with Lindgren.
The orbiting lab’s three cosmonauts spent Thursday morning practicing an emergency evacuation drill on a computer. Commander Oleg Artemyev joined Flight Engineers Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov and simulated an unlikely emergency scenario that would require the threesome to quickly enter the Soyuz MS-21 crew ship, undock from the station, and descend toward Earth for a landing. The trio then split up in the afternoon and worked on an array of communications and life support systems.
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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