ISS - Expedition 68 Mission patch.
March 16, 2023
The Expedition 68 crew focused on cargo operations, science experiments, and maintenance tasks after the SpaceX Dragon docked to the International Space Station at 7:31 a.m. EDT.
Dragon successfully docked to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module, delivering more than 6,200 pounds of research, hardware, and supplies. Afterward, NASA Flight Engineers Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen, Woody Hoburg, and Flight Engineer Sultan Alneyadi from UAE (United Arab Emirates) spent time unloading cargo from the spacecraft. Alneyadi and Rubio were specifically tasked with unpacking double-cold bags for transporting samples into the station’s Minus Eighty Laboratory Freezer, or MELFI.
Image above: The last rays of an orbital sunset fade below Earth’s horizon in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 269 miles above the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of southern Argentina on Feb. 17, 2023. Image Credit: NASA.
NASA astronauts were occupied with research studies and lab upkeep work as well. Bowen removed containers from the Kubik temperature-controlled incubator for studying biological samples in microgravity. Hoburg took turns with Bowen setting up equipment to perform a saliva collection.
Alneyadi replaced components in the station’s bathroom, also known as the Waste and Hygiene Compartment, before performing a functionality test. He later retrieved an air sample from inside Dragon for analysis with the ANITA-2 (Analyzing Interferometer for Ambient Air-2) device.
Image above: An orbital sunrise reveals cloud tops above the Pacific Ocean northeast of New Zealand as the International Space Station orbited 260 miles above on Feb. 10, 2023. Astronauts aboard the space station see 16 sunrises and sunsets per day due to their high orbital velocity—17,500 miles per hour. In the more than 20 years that people have been living aboard, the station has circumnavigated Earth tens of thousands of times. Image Credit: NASA.
Meanwhile, Flight Engineer Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos prepared for a session for the Pilot-T experiment, which assesses the ability of cosmonauts to perform complex tasks at different points during their spaceflight. Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin gathered to review equipment to return in the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft. A coolant leak was discovered last December on the Soyuz MS-22, which is slated to undock without crew from the station’s Rassvet Module on March 28.
Related article:
SpaceX Resupply Mission Docks to the Space Station
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2023/03/spacex-resupply-mission-docks-to-space.html
Related links:
Expedition 68: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition68/index.html
Minus Eighty Laboratory Freezer (MELFI): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=56
Kubik: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=894
ANITA-2 (Analyzing Interferometer for Ambient Air-2): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7445
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), Text, Credit: NASA/Heidi Lavelle/Monika Luabeya.
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