mardi 13 juin 2017

Crew Starts Human, Botany Studies Before Next Cargo Mission










ISS - Expedition 52 Mission patch.

June 13, 2017

The Expedition 52 crew of two NASA astronauts and one Roscosmos cosmonaut is in its second week aboard the International Space Station. Also, as one station resupply ship completed its mission in space on Sunday another rolled out to its pad for a launch this week.

International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: NASA

Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson started Monday measuring her shoulders, back, chest and hips for the Body Measures experiment. Scientists are researching how living in space changes body shape and size which may influence the design of future crew suits.

Jack Fischer of NASA studied how plants sense light and grow in space for the Seedling Growth-3 experiment. He also worked on removing and replacing a bolt that jammed after the last SpaceX Dragon cargo craft left the station back in March. The maintenance work is being done ahead of the departure of the newest Dragon which arrived June 5. Dragon will remain attached to the Harmony module until July 2.


Image above: The Progress 67 rocket rolls out Sunday to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Image Credit: Roscosmos.

The Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo craft deorbited into Earth’s atmosphere Sunday at 1:12 p.m. EST after its release from the station a week earlier. The same day, Russia’s Progress 67 (67P) cargo ship rolled out to its launch pad in Kazakhstan where it will liftoff Wednesday at 5:20 a.m. EDT. The 67P will dock Friday at 7:42 a.m. to the Zvezda service module’s aft port.

Related links:

Body Measures: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1070.html

Seedling Growth-3: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1189.html

Expedition 52: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition52/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch