ISS - Expedition 59 Mission patch.
March 20, 2019
The Expedition 59 crew is busy preparing for the first spacewalk of 2019 set to begin in just two days. Meanwhile, the orbital residents are still exploring the effects of space on their bodies while familiarizing themselves with emergency hardware.
NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Anne McClain continued organizing their tools this morning ahead of Friday morning’s spacewalk. The duo will enter the Quest module’s crew airlock and their spacesuits will go on battery power Friday around 8:05 a.m. EDT signaling the beginning of the spacewalk.
Expedition 59 EVA 52 & 53 Briefing March 19, 2019
Video above:: NASA experts discuss the upcoming power upgrade spacewalks. Video Credit: NASA.
Hague and McClain will spend about six-and-a-half hours upgrading the International Space Station’s storage capacity. They will swap out old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new lithium-ion batteries and install battery adapter plates on the Port-4 truss structure. NASA TV begins its live space coverage Friday at 6:30 a.m.
Image above: NASA astronaut and Expedition 59 Flight Engineer Christina Koch familiarizes herself with International Space Station hardware inside the Unity module. Image Credits: NASA/JSC.
Hague started Wednesday, however, in the Columbus lab module helping scientists understand how microgravity impacts the perception of time. McClain collected light measurements in the afternoon from two laboratory modules and the Quest airlock to document how new station LED lights affect crew wellness.
The station’s latest crew arrivals spent a couple of hours Wednesday morning checking out safety and communications gear. Hague along with Flight Engineers Christina Koch and Alexey Ovchinin split their time between the station’s U.S. and Russian segments looking at emergency hardware and procedures.
Image above: A waxing gibbous Moon is seen above Earth's limb as the International Space Station was orbiting 266 miles above the South Atlantic Ocean. The term “supermoon” was coined in 1979 and is used to describe what astronomers would call a perigean (pear-ih-jee-un) full moon: a full Moon occurring near or at the time when the Moon is at its closest point in its orbit around Earth. Tonight's supermoon is the third and final supermoon of 2019. The first was on Jan. 21, and the second was on Feb. 19. In this image, the Moon is waxing or growing bigger. Gibbous means that it is less than a full Moon, but larger than the Moon's shape in its third quarter. Image Credit: NASA.
Related links:
Expedition 59: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition59/index.html
Spacewalk: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/spacewalks/
Quest module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/joint-quest-airlock
Port-4 truss structure: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/truss-structure
NASA TV: https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv
Columbus lab module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/europe-columbus-laboratory
Perception of time: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7504
Light measurements: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=2013
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), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia/Yvette Smith.
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