ISS - Expedition 61 Mission patch.
January 8, 2020
The Expedition 61 crew is gearing up for the first three spacewalks of 2020 set for this month. Meanwhile, the International Space Station is bustling with an array of microgravity research activities today.
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch will conduct the first two spacewalks scheduled for Jan. 15 and Jan. 20. The duo will finish replacing older nickel-hydrogen batteries with new lithium-ion batteries on the station’s Port-6 truss structure. They spent Wednesday reviewing spacewalk procedures and inspecting spacesuit tethers.
Image above: The Expedition 61 crew gathers together for a meal. Clockwise from top left are, Christina Koch, Oleg Skripochka, Luca Parmitano, Alexander Skvortsov, Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan. Image Credit: NASA.
The next spacewalk would be Jan. 25 following the successful battery replacements. NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and Commander Luca Parmitano of ESA (European Space Agency) will finish the repair work they started in November on the station’s cosmic particle detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.
In the midst of the spacewalk preparations, the lab residents kept up the ongoing space science to improve life for humans on and off Earth.
Image above: NASA astronaut Jessica Meir takes an out-of-this-world "space-selfie" with her spacesuit helmet visor down reflecting her camera and International Space Station hardware. She and fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch (out of frame) ventured into the vacuum of space for seven hours and 17 minutes to swap a failed battery charge-discharge unit (BCDU) with a spare during the first all-woman spacewalk. Image Credit: NASA.
Morgan began the day installing botany research gear inside Japan’s Cell Biology Experiment Facility before transferring resupply racks to the Cygnus space freighter. Parmitano conducted a vision test then cleaned up Rodent Research hardware that housed mice that were returned to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft.
Cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Skripochka split their time on Russian science and maintenance tasks. The duo partnered together for a study exploring piloting methods under a variety of gravity conditions. Skvortsov then measured the station’s radiation environment as Skripochka replaced fuel bottles for combustion research.
Related articles:
Dragon Splashes Down in Pacific Returning Science and Cargo
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/01/dragon-splashes-down-in-pacific.html
Dragon Released from Station Carrying Science for Earth-Analysis
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/01/dragon-released-from-station-carrying.html
Related links:
Expedition 61: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition61/index.html
First three spacewalks of 2020: https://cms.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-tv-coverage-set-for-three-spacewalks-in-january
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS): https://cms.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/alpha-magnetic-spectrometer.html
Cell Biology Experiment Facility: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=333
Rodent Research: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=8075
Piloting methods: https://www.energia.ru/en/iss/researches/human/24.html
Rradiation environment: https://www.energia.ru/en/iss/researches/human/03.html
Combustion research: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=317
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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