Orbiter.ch Space News: Space Station Science Highlights: Week of Feb 26, 2018

vendredi 2 mars 2018

Space Station Science Highlights: Week of Feb 26, 2018

ISS - Expedition 55 Mission patch.

March 2, 2018

Image above: This week, the Sally Ride EarthKAM aboard the International Space Station captured this image of the country of Mauritania, the 11th largest in Africa. Ninety percent of Mauritania lies within the Sahara Desert. Image Credit: NASA.

Crew members aboard the International Space Station put in many hours working on scientific investigations this week. Expedition 55 Commander Anton Shkaplerov, Flight Engineers Scott Tingle of NASA and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency also took a day off after saying farewell to Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin and NASA astronauts Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei. The three returned to Earth inside the Soyuz MS-06 spacecraft Feb 27, landing in south central Kazakhstan at 9:31 p.m. EST.

Veteran NASA astronauts Ricky Arnold and Drew Feustel, along with cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev of Russian space agency Roscosmos, are scheduled for a March 21 launch to the station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft.

Image above: Crew members aboard the International Space Station have grown two batches of mixed greens (mizuna, red romaine lettuce and tokyo bekana cabbage), and are now running two Veggie facilities simultaneously. Image Credit: NASA.

Here are more details on some of the science that happened last week aboard your orbiting laboratory:

Blood sample collection continues

Cell-Free Epigenome, a JAXA study, collects blood samples from astronauts and analyzes them for cellular genes. Blood carries molecular signals released from cells inside the body, and this analysis gives scientists insight into how the human body functions during space flight. This week, crew members completed blood draws for the experiment.

Device installed to study almost-boiling liquids

Device for the study of Critical Liquids and Crystallization (DECLIC) is a multi-user facility for studying transparent media and their phase transitions in microgravity. This week, the crew installed and activated the DECLIC Alice-Like Insert-Refurbishment (DECLIC ALI-R), which studies liquids at the verge of boiling. Heat during boiling events flows in different ways in microgravity and on Earth, and understanding these heat flows helps scientists develop better cooling systems for use in microgravity.

Image above: This week, the crew relocated the LAB1P1 Internal Thermal Control System (ITCS), a reconfiguration that allows MTL rack flow control, which is required to support the Life Support Rack, arriving on HTV-7 later this year. Image Credit: NASA.

EarthKAM racked up thousands of images

The Sally Ride Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students (EarthKAM) investigation allowed students to remotely control a digital camera aboard the station to photograph interesting features on Earth. This week, crew shut down and stowed EarthKAM. In all, a total of 273 schools representing 21,417 students and 35 countries signed up to request images, 36,801 image requests were submitted, with 8,716 images downlinked and posted to the website earthkam.org.

Other work was done on these investigations: Crew Earth Observations, BEAM, Space Headaches, Lighting Effects, Transparent Alloys, DOSIS-3D, Manufacturing Device, VESSEL ID, Plant Gravity Perception, VEG-03, Rodent Research-6, Circadian Rhythms, Biochem Profile, Meteor, NICER, Two Phase Flow, Functional Immune, Marrow, and Cerebral Autoregulation.

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