ISS - Expedition 59 Mission patch.
March 27, 2019
Two days away from the second International Space Station spacewalk of 2019 and the Expedition 59 crew is studying the human brain and an astronaut’s wake-sleep cycle in space.
Flight Engineers Nick Hague and Christina Koch will exit the Quest airlock Friday for about 6.5 hours of battery swaps to upgrade the station’s power storage capacity. The duo will set their spacesuits to battery power about 8:20 a.m. EDT Friday signifying the start of their spacewalk. NASA TV will begins its live coverage at 6:30 a.m.
Image above: NASA astronauts Christina Koch (left) and Nick Hague are fitted in U.S. spacesuits and check out spacewalk cameras inside the Quest airlock. Image Credit: NASA.
While Hague and Koch were organizing their spacewalk tools today, the duo had time to research how blood flows to the brain in microgravity. Koch took Doppler waveform measurements of her arterial blood pressure for the Cerebral Autoregulation study. Hague then closed out the brain blood-flow experiment and stowed its gear in the Kibo lab module.
Astronaut David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency was back on spacesuit duty today cleaning cooling loops, checking tools and readying the SAFER jetpacks. He later worked on a wearable device, the Actiwatch Spectrum (AWS), which measures an astronaut’s daily wake-sleep cycle, or circadian rhythm. The AWS provides doctors insights into sleep quality, sleep onset and ambient light quality aboard the orbital lab.
International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit: NASA
NASA astronaut Anne McClain also assisted with the spacesuit work today checking the SAFER jet packs and reconfiguring the U.S. spacesuits. She also worked on a science freezer and trashed obsolete ultrasonic hardware designed to detect pressure leaks.
Related links:
Expedition 59: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition59/index.html
Spacewalk: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/spacewalks/
NASA TV: https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv
Cerebral Autoregulation: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=1938
Kibo lab module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/japan-kibo-laboratory
Actiwatch Spectrum (AWS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=838
Science freezer: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=342
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.
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