May 1, 2024

Space Station Crew Starts Week With Space Agriculture, Human Cells and Spacesuits

ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Matthias Maurer worked throughout Monday on the Cytoskeleton area biology research study. That research study takes place in the Kibo laboratory module and uses the Life Science Glovebox to check out how the internal machinery of the human cell is affected by long-lasting area missions.
NASA Flight Engineer Kayla Barron likewise worked in Kibo and established the new Mochii electron-scanning microscope to determine trace particles aboard the station. NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn fed mice and cleaned their environments throughout Monday prior to inspecting and cleaning hatch seals in the stations U.S. section.
Commander Anton Shkaplerov and Flight Engineer Pyotr Dubrov partnered together during the early morning on a pair of Russian research studies taking a look at how area impacts heart activity and arm muscles. The duo later invested the remainder of the day setting up Russian Orlan spacesuits for a spacewalk set to begin on Jan. 19. The two cosmonauts will spend about 7 hours in the vacuum of space outfitting the stations most recent modules, Nauka and Prichal.

Visualized from left, are the Soyuz MS-19 crew ship and the Nauka multipurpose lab module with the Prichal docking module attached. Credit: NASA
The Expedition 66 crew started Monday promoting area agriculture and observing how the human cell adapts to weightlessness. 2 cosmonauts are also preparing for the first spacewalk of 2022 set to start next week at the International Space Station.
Growing plants in area is critical to keeping crews healthy as NASA and its international partners prepare human missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Similar to human beings residing in space, microgravity impacts plants and scientists want to find out how to effectively grow crops in space to sustain crews with less assistance from Earth.
Today, NASA Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei harvested the shoots and roots of Arabidopsis plants grown on petri plates inside the Veggie center. Fellow NASA Flight Engineer Raja Chari gathered the harvested samples and stowed them in a science freezer for later analysis. The APEX-07, or Advanced Plant Experiment-07, study is looking at how microgravity impacts hereditary expression in plants.

The duo later on spent the rest of the day setting up Russian Orlan spacesuits for a spacewalk set to start on Jan. 19.

By NASA
January 11, 2022