April 18, 2024

Space Station Crew Kicks Off 2022 With Biology, Botany and Spacewalk Preps

Clockwise from bottom, astronauts Raja Chari, Kayla Barron, Thomas Marshburn and Matthias Maurer are envisioned throughout a playful portrait aboard the station. Credit: NASA
The five astronauts and 2 cosmonauts of Expedition 66 started the first work week of 2022 looking into microgravity science, examining Crew Dragon emergency treatments, and ramping up for a spacewalk.
Biology and botany are critical research subjects on the orbiting laboratory as NASA and its global partners prepare human objectives to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Robotics is likewise essential as researchers and engineers check out a variety of methods to help area crews.
NASA Flight Engineer Raja Chari swabbed bacteria samples today and began sequencing their DNA with the BioMole Facility to understand the microbial environment on the station. Thomas Marshburn of NASA photographed operations for the Plant Habitat-05 experiment that is studying cotton genes. NASA astronaut Kayla Barron set up an AstroBee robotic free leaflet with a speculative audio sensor that may perhaps recognize early indicators of space hardware failure.

The three NASA astronauts likewise signed up with ESA (European Space Agency) Matthias Maurer and examined their treatments for a variety of emergency situation situations aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon lorry. The quartet trained on a computer system for unlikely occasions such as a fire, a depressurization, and an emergency situation undocking in the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The stations other NASA astronaut, Mark Vande Hei, had Monday early morning off prior to entering into the afternoon dealing with speculative equipment that might keep safe temperatures in U.S. spacesuits. Vande Hei, in addition to cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov, are because of depart the station in the spring after nearly a year in area.
The next spacewalk at the International Space Station is targeted for January 19 to equip the Nauka multipurpose lab module. Cosmonauts Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov began Monday morning examining the spacewalking tools they will use to configure and finish connecting Nauka to the stations Russian section.