ISS - Expedition 55 Mission patch.
April 27, 2018
Image above: Houston, Texas, the home of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and Galveston Bay are pictured from the space station at an altitude of about 250 miles. Image Credit: NASA.
Robotics controllers and Expedition 55 crew members are getting ready for the departure of the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship next week. The commercial space freighter will leave the International Space Station and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday loaded with cargo for retrieval and analysis.
Flight Engineer Ricky Arnold powered up command and communications gear today that will aid the crew when Dragon departs the station on Wednesday at 10:22 a.m. EDT. NASA TV will begin its live coverage of the departure activities at 10 a.m. Dragon will splashdown in the Pacific Ocean about six hours later to be recovered by SpaceX and NASA personnel. The splashdown off the southern coast of California will not be seen on NASA TV.
Image above: SpaceX's Dragon cargo craft arrived at the International Space Station April 4, 2018, on the company's 14th station resupply mission. After delivering more than 5,800 pounds of science investigations and crew supplies, the Dragon is scheduled to depart the station May 2, 2018, returning to Earth with more than 4,000 pounds of cargo, including science samples from human and animal research, biology and biotechnology studies, physical science investigations and education activities. Image Credit: NASA.
The Canadarm2 will be remotely maneuvered today to grapple Dragon today while it is still attached to the Harmony module. In the meantime the 57.7-foot-long robotic arm and its fine-tuned robotic hand, also known as Dextre, are completing the installation of an external materials exposure experiment outside of Japan’s Kibo laboratory module.
Image above: Flying over Gulf of Saint-Laurent, Canada, seen by EarthCam on ISS, speed: 27'617 Km/h, altitude: 420,57 Km, image captured by Roland Berga (on Earth in Switzerland) from International Space Station (ISS) using ISS-HD Live application with EarthCam's from ISS on April 27, 2018 at 14:42 UTC.
Astronauts Drew Feustel and Scott Tingle are still packing Dragon today with a variety of cargo including space station hardware and research samples. The STaARS-1 experiment facility has completed a year of operations at the station and is being readied for its return aboard Dragon next week. The research device supported observations of living systems exposed to simulated gravity such as Earth, the Moon and Mars. Feustel also stowed faulty life support gear in Dragon for refurbishment back on Earth.
Related links:
Materials exposure experiment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=7515
STaARS-1 experiment facility: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=7389
SpaceX Dragon: http://www.nasa.gov/spacex
NASA TV: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
Expedition 55: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition55/index.html
Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html
International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.
Best regards, Orbiter.ch
