As their time on the International Space Station winds down, the Expedition 73 crew continued science and maintenance activities while also preparing for the arrival of the crewmates who will take their place.
Orbital observation
Anne McClain was not planning to take any photographs.
The Expedition 73 flight engineer and NASA astronaut had taken a moment to herself in the space station’s Cupola when she felt compelled to capture the auroral glow out the window.
“As we get close to leaving the International Space Station, I find myself wanting to savor every moment and every view. None of us are guaranteed to get to do this again, and every minute spent in space is a special one,” McClain wrote on social media.
“I dropped into the Cupola to look out the window and just be in the moment, not taking photos or looking for anything in particular. Well, when this view presented itself, I changed my mind … I had to pick up a camera to share this with all of you. Wow!” she wrote.
Science status
Among the research that was conducted by the Expedition 73 crew aboard the space station this week was:
CIMON — Expedition 73 commander Takuya Onishi set two robots free to play hide and seek in a demonstration of future AI-powered crew assistants. CIMON, or the Crew Interactive MObile companioN, took control of a free-flying camera to search out items that were hidden throughout the Kibo laboratory module.
Muscle Stimulation — Astronauts on the space station exercise every day to protect against bone and muscle loss. Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers this week continued tests of a possible alternative countermeasure to muscular atrophy. McClain attached electrodes and sent electrical impulses into Ayers’ leg muscles.
Drain Brain 2.0 — In a separate study, Ayers also wore electrodes on her abdomen and shoulders to measure how blood flows from her heart to her brain in microgravity. She also wore a heart monitor while exercising using a treadmill and a resistive device.
Cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov spent some time assessing new freeze-dried food packs, while Alexey Zubritsky and Kirill Peskov tested a suit that can measure the vibrations generated aboard the space station while running on a treadmill.
Station keeping
Much of the Expedition 73 crew’s time devoted this week to maintaining the space station’s systems focused on the upcoming arrival of SpaceX’s Crew-11 astronauts and cosmonauts and the departure of the Crew-10 members.
Seats set-up — Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, two of the home-bound crewmates, helped fellow NASA astronaut Jonny Kim re-install the crew chairs aboard the Dragon spacecraft that will soon depart. They also stowed emergency equipment inside the capsule.
Staging supplies — Kim worked on gathering the items the incoming new crew will initially need aboard the space station.
Sleep stations — McClain, Ayers, and Onishi cleaned out the air ducts leading into their crew quarters in the Harmony module. McClain then configured a temporary sleeping bag inside her Dragon ride home while Ayers outfitted an extra sleep station in the European Columbus laboratory. These extra “bunks” will be used during the handover period between the new and outgoing crew members.
Astronaut activity
Watch On
On Monday (July 28), Expedition 73 flight engineer Jonny Kim of NASA was interviewed live by the participants in the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Scholars Program at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
“Space has been a humbling environment in so many different ways,” said Kim, beginning a reply to a question about how his experience as a flight surgeon might have set up false assumptions about what he has now experienced in space. “Having a background in medicine, dating back to my early days as a combat medic on the SEAL teams to later being a physician, was having an understanding of how our bodies work, the human physiology.”
“We’ve evolved over a long period of time to use gravity. We depend on gravity for our circulatory system [and] our muscular-skeletal system, so when we go into space, a lot of those things change,” he said. “So that basis in physiology has helped me appreciate why we do countermeasures … why we have to go on a bike or run every single day or lift weights for an hour and a half, it is to counteract a lot of the — in terms of terra firma — maladapted changes.”
By the numbers
As of Friday (Aug. 1), there are 7 people aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 73 commander Takuya Onishi of JAXA, Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers and Jonny Kim of NASA and Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky of Roscosmos, all flight engineers.
There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX’s Dragon “Endurance” attached to the forward port of the Harmony module and Roscosmos’ Soyuz MS-27 attached to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.
There are two docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos’ Progress MS-30 (91P) attached to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, and Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module.
As of Friday, the space station has been continuously crewed for 24 years and 9 months.