lundi 5 décembre 2022

Astronauts Take Day Off Following Spacewalk

 







ISS - Expedition 68 Mission patch.


Dec 5, 2022

Four Expedition 68 crew members took Monday off following a busy weekend of spacewalk activities. The rest of the International Space Station crew focused on electronics, life support, and Orlan spacesuit maintenance.

Image above: The waxing gibbous Moon is pictured above Earth’s horizon as the space station orbited 271 miles over southern Argentina. Image Credit: NASA.

NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio are relaxing today following a spacewalk on Saturday that saw the successful installation of a roll-out solar array on the station’s Starboard-4 truss segment. The duo then spent Sunday cleaning up after the spacewalk in the Quest airlock and discussing the results of the excursion with specialists on the ground. Flight Engineers Nicole Mann of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) also took Monday off having assisted the spacewalkers over the weekend.

The next spacewalk is planned later this month to relocate a radiator from the Rassvet module to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin are replacing pumps inside their Orlan spacesuits today as they prepare for that spacewalk.

International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: ESA

Flight Engineer Anna Kikina spent the day servicing a variety of electronics and life support hardware aboard the orbiting lab. She replaced gear and reconfigured cables then worked on the Nauka module’s ventilation system.

Related article:

Spacewalkers Complete New Solar Array Installation on Station
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/12/spacewalkers-complete-new-solar-array.html

Related links:

Expedition 68: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition68/index.html

Starboard-4 truss segment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/truss-structure

Quest airlock: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/joint-quest-airlock

Rassvet module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/rassvet

Nauka multipurpose laboratory module: https://www.roscosmos.ru/tag/nauka/

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

Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch