The Expedition 72 crew kept up its space research activities on Tuesday while also preparing to split up after the SpaceX Crew-10 mission arrives this week. Spacesuit checks and lab maintenance duties rounded out the day aboard the International Space Station as the orbital outpost reached a milestone 150,000 orbits around the Earth.
Doctors are researching the cardiovascular risk for astronauts living and working in space for long durations. One issue they are concerned about is aging-like changes seen in a crewmember’s arteries. The long-running Vascular Aging investigation looks at these space-caused symptoms to decrease the health risk for astronauts and treat aging conditions on Earth. NASA Flight Engineers Nick Hague and Don Pettit kicked off their shift doing blood work for one portion of the study looking at glucose tolerance. Hague collected his blood samples and handed them over to Pettit who spun them in a centrifuge. Afterward, Hague inserted the blood specimens inside a science freezer then stowed the research hardware completing the experiment run.
Pettit, with help from NASA Flight Engineer Butch Wilmore, also tended to Red Romaine lettuce plants growing inside the Advanced Plant Habitat as they both checked the temperature inside the space botany research device located in the Kibo laboratory module. The lettuce is growing for the Plant Habitat-07 study to learn how to grow crops on future space missions.
Wilmore earlier joined NASA astronaut Suni Williams and continued packing for their upcoming departure aboard the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft with Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. The quartet joined each other at the end of the day on Tuesday and inspected the pressure suits and communication gear they will wear during the return to Earth ending the SpaceX Crew-9 mission. The homebound foursome will begin its crew handover activities once Crew-10 joins the station crew later this week.
Crew-10 is targeted to lift off at 7:48 p.m. EDT on Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the orbiting lab. Commander Anne McClain will lead Pilot Nichole Ayers, both NASA astronauts, and Mission Specialists Takuya Onishi from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Kirill Peskov from Roscosmos aboard the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft. After docking to the Harmony module’s forward port, opening the hatch, and entering the station the Crew-10 members will become Expedition 72 flight engineers.
Gorbunov joined fellow Flight Engineer Ivan Vagner from Roscosmos and tried on a specialized suit that may prevent fluids from accumulating in a crew member’s upper body due to microgravity. The lower body negative pressure suit may help pull fluids from the upper body and counteract space-caused head and eye pressure. Flight Engineer Alexey Ovchinin spent his day in the Poisk module checking life support components on an Orlan spacesuit.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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