ISS - Expedition 65 Mission patch.
June 28, 2021
The Cygnus resupply ship will complete its cargo mission to the International Space Station on Tuesday. Several hours later, Russia’s ISS Progress 78 (78P) cargo craft will launch on a two-day trip to replenish the Expedition 65 crew.
Commander Akihiko Hoshide joined Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet and closed the hatch on the trash-filled Cygnus early Monday morning. Following that, NASA Flight Engineers Shane Kimbrough and Mark Vande Hei installed the Slingshot small satellite deployer on Cygnus’ hatch.
Image above: (From left) The Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply ship and Russia’s ISS Progress 78 cargo craft will depart and launch just hours apart on Tuesday. Image Credit: NASA.
Cygnus will be released from the Canadarm2 robotic arm at 12:25 p.m. EDT on Tuesday. Once Cygnus reaches a safe distance from the station, the Slingshot will deploy five CubeSats for a variety of research including atmospheric physics as well as software evaluation and development.
The 78P cargo craft sits atop its rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad in Kazakhstan. It will launch Tuesday at 7:27 p.m. carrying over 3,600 pounds of food, fuel and supplies for the seven space station residents.
Image above: This composite image made from seven frames shows the International Space Station, with a crew of seven onboard, in silhouette as it transits the Sun at roughly five miles per second, Friday, June 25, 2021, from near Nellysford, Va. Onboard are Expedition 65 NASA astronauts Megan McArthur, Mark Vande Hei, Shane Kimbrough, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Oleg Novitskiy. At the time of the transit, Kimbrough and Pesquet were working outside on the station’s port 6 truss to install the second Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) on the 4B power channel. Image Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky.
Roscosmos Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov spent Monday morning preparing for the arrival of the 78P scheduled on Thursday at 9:03 p.m. The duo practiced telerobotically operated maneuvers to manually dock the ISS Progress 78 to the Poisk module in the unlikely event the Russian cargo craft was unable to automatically dock on its own.
Progress MS-17 ready for launch
NASA TV, on the agency’s website and the NASA app, will broadcast all three mission events live. Cygnus departure coverage begins at noon. The ISS Progress 78 launch broadcast starts at 7 p.m. on Tuesday with docking coverage starting Thursday at 8:15 p.m. View the NASA Television schedule here: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/schedule.html
Despite the cargo craft preparations, there was time for science today aboard the orbiting lab. Kimbrough set up the InSpace-4 physics study that will explore advanced materials and manufacturing techniques. NASA Flight Engineer Megan McArthur studied ways to produce high-quality protein crystals in microgravity to benefit the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries on Earth.
Related links:
Expedition 65: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition65/index.html
Slingshot small satellite deployer: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=7847
Canadarm2 robotic arm: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/mobile-servicing-system.html
Poisk module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/poisk-mini-research-module-2
NASA TV: https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive
InSpace-4 physics study: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7669
High-quality protein crystals in microgravity: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=8073
Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/overview.html
International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia/Roscosmos/SciNews.
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