On Wednesday, the Expedition 72 crew aboard the International Space Station focused its efforts mostly on spacesuits and advanced exercise gear. The orbital residents also worked on crew and cargo spacecraft operations at the orbital outpost.
NASA Flight Engineers Butch Wilmore and Nick Hague joined each other in the Quest airlock and swapped components on a spacesuit in preparation for a spacewalk planned in the spring. Next, Wilmore wrapped up the suit work and stowed the spacewalking hardware in Quest. Hague relocated medical operations gear from Quest into the Tranquility module and checked their wireless configurations.
Station Commander Suni Williams worked inside the Columbus laboratory module on futuristic exercise gear designed by the European Space Agency. She powered up the Portable Pulmonary Function System (PPFS) and tested its network connectivity with other space station exercise systems. The PPFS measures a variety of respiratory and cardiovascular factors such as oxygen intake, heart rate, blood pressure, and more helping researchers learn more about space biology and determine the effectiveness of space exercise techniques.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts also joined Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov and reviewed procedures on computer tablets for unlikely spacecraft emergency scenarios such as a fire or depressurization. The quartet is targeted to return to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft in March several days after the SpaceX Crew-10 mission launches which is currently targeted for no earlier than March 12.
NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit kicked off his day in the Kibo laboratory module inspecting and swapping out wireless communications gear. Next, he documented his daily food and medicine intake before he installed a pair of temporary hatch window covers in the Unity and Harmony modules.
Gorbunov worked on water transfers between the U.S. and Roscosmos segments of the orbital lab then cleaned ventilation systems inside the Poisk module. His fellow cosmonauts, Flight Engineers Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, continued packing trash and discarded gear inside the Progress 89 cargo craft due to leave the station on Feb. 25. Ovchinin, along with Gorbunov, then took a test documenting his experience communicating with mission controllers from around the world. Vagner pointed a camera with a spectrometer installed toward Earth and photographed landmarks in a variety of wavelengths.
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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