The week ended with spacesuit maintenance on the International Space Station and research on how microgravity affects blood pressure and breathing. Expedition 72 residents also maintained various hardware that supported scientific experiments and life support systems at the orbiting outpost.
Two NASA astronauts, Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineer Butch Wilmore, continue to prepare for the spacewalk scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. ET on Thursday, January 30. . Williams worked in the Quest’s airlock all Friday, completing a charge on the lithium-ion battery. A power spacesuit that can be used during extravehicular activities. They then filtered and cleaned the water loops that cool astronauts in their spacesuits in the extreme environment of space. Wilmore also participated to verify the functionality of spacesuit components such as glove heaters, cameras, and helmet lights. Next week, the pair will remove the radio antenna hardware and prepare for a 6-1/2-hour spacewalk to search for microbes outside the orbital outpost.
NASA flight engineer Nick Haig started his day inside the Columbus Experiment Wing, setting up experimental vessels in the BioLab, a biological research instrument that allows researchers to observe microorganisms, cells, tissues, and more in zero gravity. NASA flight engineer Don Pettit activated life support on the Unity module and removed more life support from the Tranquility module. The two then met at the end of the day to review procedures for future use in maintaining the external thermal control system that cools the orbital laboratory’s external hardware.
Roscosmos flight engineers Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner started their day by studying humanity. This time, Ovtinin was wearing a sensor that measures the breath he exhaled after taking a deep breath, helping doctors understand how microgravity affects the respiratory system. Wagner fitted another set of sensors for research to observe how crew members’ vascular systems function during long-duration space missions. Cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov spent the first part of the day working on orbital plumbing in the Nauka science module, then finished his shift by auditing storage space throughout the Roscosmos portion of the station.
For more information about station activities, follow the space station blog, X’s @space_station and @ISS_Research, ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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