Four Expedition 67 crew members slept in on Friday following a spacewalk the day before at the International Space Station. The other three orbital residents wrapped up the workweek researching a variety of space phenomena, unpacking a U.S. cargo ship, and maintaining orbital lab systems.
Commander and six-time spacewalker Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos led ESA (European Space Agency) Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti on her first spacewalk on Thursday. The duo set up the European robotic arm for operations on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module during a spacewalk that lasted seven hours and five minutes. Ten nanosatellites were also deployed into Earth orbit for a radio technology experiment at the beginning of the excursion.
Artemyev and Cristoforetti woke up late on Friday and spent the rest of the day cleaning their Russian Orlan spacesuits and inspecting spacewalk tools and tethers. Cosmonauts Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov also slept in on Friday having monitored the spacewalkers and assisted the duo in and out of their spacesuits the day before. The pair also helped out with the post-spacewalk activities returning the Poisk airlock to its normal configuration and re-opening the hatch to the ISS Progress 80 cargo craft.
The station’s three NASA Flight Engineers including Bob Hines, Jessica Watkins, and Kjell Lindgren, worked a normal shift on Friday and wrapped up their workweek focusing on an array of science and maintenance operations.
Hines swapped fiber optic samples for a space manufacturing study, photographed samples for a cell-free protein production experiment, then activated the Astrobee robotic free-flyers ahead of a student robotics competition. Watkins continued unpacking cargo from inside the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship before stowing hardware for a water recycling experiment. Lindgren worked on payload cable connections then moved on to orbital plumbing tasks inside the station’s bathroom, also known as the Waste and Hygiene Compartment.
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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