ISS - Expedition 55 Mission patch.
April 17, 2018
The International Space Station is set to raise its orbit Wednesday ahead of upcoming cargo and crew missions. Meanwhile, the six Expedition 55 crew members are staying busy today with medical tests, cargo work and lab maintenance.
Image above: Expedition 55 Flight Engineer Drew Feustel of NASA is inside the Japanese Kibo laboratory module talking to dignitaries on Earth, including university officials, musicians and scientists, during an educational event that took place at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Image Credit: NASA.
The space station will increase its altitude slightly when a docked Russian cargo craft automatically fires its engines for two minutes and six seconds early Wednesday. The maneuver will establish the correct orbit for the landing of three crew members in June and a two-orbit rendezvous capability for the next Russian Progress resupply craft in July.
Flight Engineer Scott Tingle collected and stowed his own urine sample today for a pair of biomedical studies examining the effects of spaceflight on the human body. The U.S. Navy pilot also continued operations for the Metabolic Tracking (MT) experiment that observes how human tissue samples are impacted by a specific drug compound.
Image above: Sunrise over Australia, seen by EarthCam on ISS, speed: 27'597 Km/h, altitude: 409,77 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 17, 2018 at 21:08 UTC.
Expedition 55-56 crewmates Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold checked each other’s eyes today using optical coherence tomography gear inside the Harmony module. Feustel also installed and checked the station’s first updated printer since 2000 before wrapping up his day unloading cargo from the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft. Arnold finally collected water samples and changed out a cartridge as part of preventative maintenance on a U.S. oxygen generator.
Astronaut Norishige Kanai from Japan continued more upkeep work for the Mouse Stress Defense experiment that is exploring the causes of muscle and bone loss in space. The busy flight engineer later assisted his fellow crew members unloading SpaceX cargo before injecting human tissue samples with a drug compound for the MT study.
Related links:
Metabolic Tracking (MT): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7517
SpaceX Dragon: https://www.nasa.gov/spacex
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
