Space Station Highlights: Week of January 21, 2019

ISS - Expedition 58 Mission patch.

Jan. 28, 2019

Last week, Expedition 58 crew members continued conducting science aboard the International Space Station along with packing the NG-10 Cygnus resupply vehicle for its departure from the station. Upon undocking, Cygnus will boost to an altitude and inclination ideal for satellite deployment and release small satellites from the SlingShot small satellite deployment system. The cargo craft will then begin its descent toward Earth for a fiery but safe demise over the Pacific Ocean.

International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit: NASA

Here are details about some of the science conducted in space this week:

Ongoing work to protect astronauts’ eyes
After performing dilution measures last week, crew members continued collecting data for the Fluid Shifts investigation this week, performing a lower body negative pressure imaging session. This NASA investigation collects, at various intervals, dilution measurements and baseline imaging to help determine the causes for severe and lasting physical changes seen in the eyes of astronauts during spaceflight and to support development of preventive measures. A shift of fluids to the head may contribute to these changes, so one possible intervention could be reversing this fluid shift with a lower body negative pressure device.

A day in space station life

Animation above: NASA astronaut works within the Life Sciences Glovebox as a part of the Rodent Research-8 investigation. Animation Credit: NASA.

Crew members participated in a conference and ground uplinked the file needed for a firmware update for the ISS Experience. Filmed over multiple months, ISS Experience documents daily life aboard the space station using cinematic virtual reality (VR). Videos cover different aspects of crew life, execution of science aboard the station and the international partnerships involved. 

Testing solution convection for better crystal growth

The crew installed a Biophysics-5 plate into the Fluids Integrated Rack (FIR) and Light Microscopy Module (LMM). This investigation tests whether the movement of molecules through a fluid, known as solution convection, enhances or suppresses formation of the dense liquid clusters from which crystals form. This could answer the question of why protein crystallization investigations in microgravity often generate unexpectedly low or high numbers of crystals.

Image above: The Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) Exposed Facility (EF). The JEM-EF is continuously exposed to the space environment and can hold up to 10 experiments at a time. Image Credit: NASA.

The FIR is a complementary fluid physics research facility designed to host investigations involving colloids, gels, bubbles, capillary action, phase changes, and other phenomena. The LMM, a modified flexible and state-of-the-art commercial light imaging microscope facility, provides researchers with a powerful diagnostic hardware and software tool in space.

Other work was performed on these investigations:

- MISSE-10 hosts a suite of eight NASA investigations aboard the Materials International Space Station Flight Facility (MISSE-FF): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7929

- Lighting Effects examines whether changing from fluorescent light bulbs to solid-state light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with adjustable intensity and color can improve crew circadian rhythms, sleep, and cognitive performance: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=2013

- MSPR is a multi-purpose small payload rack in the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) used for a variety of scientific experiments: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=1090

- Polar Express is a Cold Stowage managed facility for transport and storage of science samples at cryogenic temperatures (-80ºC) to and from the space station: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=1092

Related links:

Expedition 58: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition58/index.html

SlingShot: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=7847

Fluid Shifts: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=1126

ISS Experience: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7877

Biophysics-5: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7742

Fluids Integrated Rack (FIR): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=351

Light Microscopy Module (LMM): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=531

Spot the Station: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

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

Animation (mentioned), Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Michael Johnson/Vic Cooley, Lead Increment Scientist Expeditions 57/58.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Curiosity Says Farewell to Mars' Vera Rubin Ridge

NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) logo.

Jan. 28, 2019

Image above: A selfie taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Sol 2291 (January 15) at the "Rock Hall" drill site, located on Vera Rubin Ridge. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

NASA's Curiosity rover has taken its last selfie on Vera Rubin Ridge and descended toward a clay region of Mount Sharp. The twisting ridge on Mars has been the rover's home for more than a year, providing scientists with new samples — and new questions — to puzzle over.

On Dec. 15, Curiosity drilled its 19th sample at a location on the ridge called Rock Hall. On Jan. 15, the spacecraft used its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the end of its robotic arm to take a series of 57 pictures, which were stitched together into this selfie. The "Rock Hall" drill hole is visible to the lower left of the rover; the scene is dustier than usual at this time of year due to a regional dust storm.

Curiosity has been exploring the ridge since September of 2017. It's now headed into the "clay-bearing unit," which sits in a trough just south of the ridge. Clay minerals in this unit may hold more clues about the ancient lakes that helped form the lower levels on Mount Sharp.

For more information about NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, visit: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/JPL/Andrew Good.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Active galaxies point to new physics of cosmic expansion

ESA - Planck Mission patch / ESA - XMM-Newton Mission patch.

28 January 2019

Investigating the history of our cosmos with a large sample of distant ‘active’ galaxies observed by ESA’s XMM-Newton, a team of astronomers found there might be more to the early expansion of the Universe than predicted by the standard model of cosmology.

According to the leading scenario, our Universe contains only a few percent of ordinary matter. One quarter of the cosmos is made of the elusive dark matter, which we can feel gravitationally but not observe, and the rest consists of the even more mysterious dark energy that is driving the current acceleration of the Universe’s expansion.

Measuring the expansion of the Universe

This model is based on a multitude of data collected over the last couple of decades, from the cosmic microwave background, or CMB – the first light in the history of the cosmos, released only 380 000 years after the big bang and observed in unprecedented detail by ESA’s Planck mission – to more ‘local’ observations. The latter include supernova explosions, galaxy clusters and the gravitational distortion imprinted by dark matter on distant galaxies, and can be used to trace cosmic expansion in recent epochs of cosmic history – across the past nine billion years.

A new study, led by Guido Risaliti of Università di Firenze, Italy, and Elisabeta Lusso of Durham University, UK, points to another type of cosmic tracer – quasars – that would fill part of the gap between these observations, measuring the expansion of the Universe up to 12 billion years ago.

Quasars are the cores of galaxies where an active supermassive black hole is pulling in matter from its surroundings at very intense rates, shining brightly across the electromagnetic spectrum. As material falls onto the black hole, it forms a swirling disc that radiates in visible and ultraviolet light; this light, in turn, heats up nearby electrons, generating X-rays.

Supermassive black hole

Three years ago, Guido and Elisabeta realised that a well-known relation between the ultraviolet and X-ray brightness of quasars could be used to estimate the distance to these sources – something that is notoriously tricky in astronomy – and, ultimately, to probe the expansion history of the Universe.

Astronomical sources whose properties allow us to gauge their distances are referred to as ‘standard candles’.

The most notable class, known as ‘type-Ia’ supernova, consists of the spectacular demise of white dwarf stars after they have over-filled on material from a companion star, generating explosions of predictable brightness that allows astronomers to pinpoint the distance. Observations of these supernovas in the late 1990s revealed the Universe’s accelerated expansion over the last few billion years.

“Using quasars as standard candles has great potential, since we can observe them out to much greater distances from us than type-Ia supernovas, and so use them to probe much earlier epochs in the history of the cosmos,” explains Elisabeta.

With a sizeable sample of quasars at hand, the astronomers have now put their method into practice, and the results are intriguing.

XMM-Newton

Digging into the XMM-Newton archive, they collected X-ray data for over 7000 quasars, combining them with ultraviolet observations from the ground-based Sloan Digital Sky Survey. They also used a new set of data, specially obtained with XMM-Newton in 2017 to look at very distant quasars, observing them as they were when the Universe was only about two billion years old. Finally, they complemented the data with a small number of even more distant quasars and with some relatively nearby ones, observed with NASA’s Chandra and Swift X-ray observatories, respectively.

“Such a large sample enabled us to scrutinise the relation between X-ray and ultraviolet emission of quasars in painstaking detail, which greatly refined our technique to estimate their distance,” says Guido.

The new XMM-Newton observations of distant quasars are so good that the team even identified two different groups: 70 percent of the sources shine brightly in low-energy X-rays, while the remaining 30 percent emit lower amounts of X-rays that are characterised by higher energies. For the further analysis, they only kept the earlier group of sources, in which the relation between X-ray and ultraviolet emission appears clearer.

“It is quite remarkable that we can discern such level of detail in sources so distant from us that their light has been travelling for more than ten billion years before reaching us,” says Norbert Schartel, XMM-Newton project scientist at ESA.

After skimming through the data and bringing the sample down to about 1600 quasars, the astronomers were left with the very best observations, leading to robust estimates of the distance to these sources that they could use to investigate the Universe’s expansion.

Supernova and quasar data

“When we combine the quasar sample, which spans almost 12 billion years of cosmic history, with the more local sample of type-Ia supernovas, covering only the past eight billion years or so, we find similar results in the overlapping epochs,” says Elisabeta.

“However, in the earlier phases that we can only probe with quasars, we find a discrepancy between the observed evolution of the Universe and what we would predict based on the standard cosmological model.”

Looking into this previously poorly explored period of cosmic history with the help of quasars, the astronomers have revealed a possible tension in the standard model of cosmology, which might require the addition of extra parameters to reconcile the data with theory.

“One of the possible solutions would be to invoke an evolving dark energy, with a density that increases as time goes by,” says Guido.

Incidentally, this particular model would also alleviate another tension that has kept cosmologists busy lately, concerning the Hubble constant – the current rate of cosmic expansion. This discrepancy was found between estimates of the Hubble constant in the local Universe, based on supernova data – and, independently, on galaxy clusters – and those based on Planck’s observations of the cosmic microwave background in the early Universe.

Planck

“This model is quite interesting because it might solve two puzzles at once, but the jury is definitely not out yet and we’ll have to look at many more models in great detail before we can solve this cosmic conundrum,” adds Guido.

The team is looking forward to observing even more quasars in the future to further refine their results. Additional clues will also come from ESA’s Euclid mission, scheduled for a 2022 launch to explore the past ten billion years of cosmic expansion and investigate the nature of dark energy.

“These are interesting times to investigate the history of our Universe, and it’s exciting that XMM-Newton can contribute by looking at a cosmic epoch that had remained largely unexplored so far,” concludes Norbert.

Notes for editors:

“Cosmological constraints from the Hubble diagram of quasars at high redshifts” by G. Risaliti & E. Lusso is published in Nature Astronomy: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-018-0657-z

Related links:

ESA’s XMM-Newton: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/XMM-Newton_overview

ESA’s Planck: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck

ESA’s Euclid: http://sci.esa.int/euclid/

Text, Credits: ESA/Markus Bauer/Norbert Schartel/Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy/Elisabeta Lusso/Università di Firenze/INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri/Guido Risaliti/Images: ESA (artist's impression and composition); NASA/ESA/Hubble (background galaxies); CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO/C. Carreau/Courtesy of Elisabeta Lusso & Guido Risaliti (2019).

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Birth of Massive Black Holes in the Early Universe Revealed

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) logo.

Jan. 28, 2019

When the universe was still a baby – less than 1 billion years old – some of its stars turned into monster black holes. A key mystery in astronomy has been: why are there so many supermassive black holes in the early universe? 

A new study, supported by funding from NASA, the National Science Foundation and a grant from the European Commission, suggests that massive black holes thrive when galaxies form very quickly. To make a galaxy, you need stars, which are born out of gas clouds, but also an invisible substance called dark matter, which acts as a glue to keep stars from flying away from the galaxy.  If the dark matter’s “halo” structure grows quickly early in its life, the formation of stars is stifled. Instead a massive black hole can form before the galaxy takes shape. Black holes ravenously eat gas that would have otherwise produced new stars, and become larger and larger.

Image above: This image shows a 30,000 light-year region from the Renaissance Simulation, centered on a cluster of young galaxies that generate radiation (white) and metals (green) while heating the surrounding gas. A dark matter halo just outside this heated region forms three supermassive stars (inset), each one over 1,000 times the mass of our Sun. The stars will quickly collapse into massive black holes, and eventually supermassive black holes, over billions of years. Image Credits: Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Previously, scientists theorized that powerful radiation from other galaxies muted the formation of stars in these young regions with massive black holes. But new simulations suggest that the rapid growth of galaxies is key to growing the black holes.

Image above: This image shows the inner 30 light-years of a dark matter halo in a cluster of young galaxies. The rotating gaseous disk breaks apart into three clumps that collapse under their own gravity to form supermassive stars. Image Credits: John Wise, Georgia Institute of Technology.

A black hole is an extremely dense astronomical object from which nothing can escape, not even light. When a star explodes in a supernova, a black hole can be left behind. Alternatively, a supermassive star can burn through its fuel quickly and turn into a black hole, no explosion needed. Scientists say this is how many massive black holes form in rapidly assembling proto-galaxies.

The simulation-based study, to be reported January 23rd in the journal Nature, also finds that massive black holes are much more common in the universe than previously thought.

Read more from Georgia Tech: https://www.news.gatech.edu/2019/01/23/birth-massive-black-holes-early-universe-revealed

Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC): https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html

Black Holes: https://www.nasa.gov/black-holes

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Karl Hille/Elizabeth Landau.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Rover Team Beaming New Commands to Opportunity on Mars

NASA - Mars Exploration Rover B (MER-B) patch.

January 25, 2019

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have begun transmitting a new set of commands to the Opportunity rover in an attempt to compel the 15-year-old Martian explorer to contact Earth. The new commands, which will be beamed to the rover during the next several weeks, address low-likelihood events that could have occurred aboard Opportunity, preventing it from transmitting.

The rover's last communication with Earth was received June 10, 2018, as a planet-wide dust storm blanketed the solar-powered rover's location on Mars.

"We have and will continue to use multiple techniques in our attempts to contact the rover," said John Callas, project manager for Opportunity at JPL. "These new command strategies are in addition to the 'sweep and beep' commands we have been transmitting up to the rover since September." With "sweep and beep," instead of just listening for Opportunity, the project sends commands to the rover to respond back with a beep.

Image above: A Goldstone 111.5-foot (34-meter) beam-waveguide antenna tracks a spacecraft as it comes into view. The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex is located in the Mojave Desert in California. Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will use antennas like this one to transmit a new set of commands to the Opportunity rover in an attempt to compel the 15-year-old Martian explorer to contact Earth.Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The new transmission strategies are expected to go on for several weeks. They address three possible scenarios: that the rover's primary X-band radio - which Opportunity uses to communicate with Earth - has failed; that both its primary and secondary X-band radios have failed; or that the rover's internal clock, which provides a timeframe for its computer brain, is offset. A series of unlikely events would need to have transpired for any one of these faults to occur. The potential remedies being beamed up to address these unlikely events include a command for the rover to switch to its backup X-band radio and commands directed to reset the clock and respond via UHF.

"Over the past seven months we have attempted to contact Opportunity over 600 times," said Callas. "While we have not heard back from the rover and the probability that we ever will is decreasing each day, we plan to continue to pursue every logical solution that could put us back in touch."

Mars Exploration Rover (MER). Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Time is of the essence for the Opportunity team. The "dust-clearing season" - the time of year on Mars when increased winds could clear the rover's solar panels of dust that might be preventing it from charging its batteries - is drawing to a close. Meanwhile, Mars is heading into southern winter, which brings with it extremely low temperatures that are likely to cause irreparable harm to an unpowered rover's batteries, internal wiring and/or computer systems.

If either these additional transmission strategies or "sweep and beep" generates a response from the rover, engineers could attempt a recovery. If Opportunity does not respond, the project team would again consult with the Mars Program Office at JPL and NASA Headquarters to determine the path forward.

Related article:

NASA's Opportunity Rover Logs 15 Years on Mars
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2019/01/nasas-opportunity-rover-logs-15-years.html

For more information about Opportunity and the Mars Exploration Rover program, visit: https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/home/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/JPL/DC Agle.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Hubble Sees Plunging Galaxy Losing Its Gas

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

Jan. 25, 2019

The rough-and-tumble environment near the center of the massive Coma galaxy cluster is no match for a wayward spiral galaxy. New images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show a spiral galaxy being stripped of its gas as it plunges toward the cluster’s center. A long, thin streamer of gas and dust stretches like taffy from the galaxy's core and on into space. Eventually, the galaxy, named D100, will lose all of its gas and become a dead relic, deprived of the material to create new stars and shining only by the feeble glow of old, red stars.

"This galaxy stands out as a particularly extreme example of processes common in massive clusters, where a galaxy goes from being a healthy spiral full of star formation to a 'red and dead galaxy,'" said William Cramer of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, leader of the team using the Hubble observations. "The spiral arms disappear, and the galaxy is left with no gas and only old stars. This phenomenon has been known about for several decades, but Hubble provides the best imagery of galaxies undergoing this process."

Image above: The spiral galaxy D100, on the far right of this Hubble Space Telescope image, is being stripped of its gas as it plunges toward the center of the giant Coma galaxy cluster. The dark brown streaks near D100's central region are silhouettes of dust escaping from the galaxy. The dust is part of a long, thin tail, also composed of hydrogen gas, that stretches like taffy from the galaxy's core. Hubble, however, sees only the dust. The telescope's sharp vision also uncovered the blue glow of clumps of young stars in the tail. The brightest clump in the middle of the tail (the blue feature) contains at least 200,000 stars, fueled by the ongoing loss of hydrogen gas from D100. Image Credits: NASA, ESA, M. Sun (University of Alabama), and W. Cramer and J. Kenney (Yale University).

Called "ram pressure stripping," the process occurs when a galaxy, due to the pull of gravity, falls toward the dense center of a massive cluster of thousands of galaxies, which swarm around like a hive of bees. During its plunge, the galaxy plows through intergalactic material, like a boat moving through water. The material pushes gas and dust from the galaxy. Once the galaxy loses all of its hydrogen gas — fuel for starbirth — it meets an untimely death because it can no longer create new stars. The gas-stripping process in D100 began roughly 300 million years ago.

In the massive Coma cluster this violent gas-loss process occurs in many galaxies. But D100 is unique in several ways. Its long, thin tail is its most unusual feature. The tail, a mixture of dust and hydrogen gas, extends nearly 200,000 light-years, about the width of two Milky Way galaxies. But the pencil-like structure is comparatively narrow, only 7,000 light-years wide.

Image above: A long streamer of hydrogen gas is being stripped from the spiral galaxy D100 as it plunges toward the center of the giant Coma galaxy cluster. This wide view is a composite of the Hubble Space Telescope's visible-light view of the galaxy combined with a photo of a glowing red streamer of hydrogen gas taken by the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. The narrow funnel-shaped feature emanating from the galaxy's center is the red glow of hydrogen gas. Image Credits: Hubble image: NASA, ESA, M. Sun (University of Alabama), and W. Cramer and J. Kenney (Yale University); Subaru image: M. Yagi (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan).

"The tail is remarkably well-defined, straight and smooth, and has clear edges," explained team member Jeffrey Kenney, also of Yale University. "This is a surprise because a tail like this is not seen in most computer simulations. Most galaxies undergoing this process are more of a mess. The clean edges and filamentary structures of the tail suggest that magnetic fields play a prominent role in shaping it. Computer simulations show that magnetic fields form filaments in the tail's gas. With no magnetic fields, the tail is more clumpy than filamentary."

The researchers' main goal was to study star formation along the tail. Hubble's sharp vision uncovered the blue glow of clumps of young stars. The brightest clump in the middle of the tail contains at least 200,000 stars, triggered by the ongoing gas loss from the galaxy. However, based on the amount of glowing hydrogen gas contained in the tail, the team had expected Hubble to uncover three times more stars than it detected.

The Subaru Telescope in Hawaii observed the glowing tail in 2007 during a survey of the Coma cluster's galaxies. But the astronomers needed Hubble observations to confirm that the hot hydrogen gas contained in the tail was a signature of star formation.

"Without the depth and resolution of Hubble, it's hard to say if the glowing hydrogen-gas emission is coming from stars in the tail or if it's just from the gas being heated," Cramer said. "These Hubble visible-light observations are the first and best follow-up of the Subaru survey."

Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Animation Credits: NASA/ESA

The Hubble data show that the gas-stripping process began on the outskirts of the galaxy and is moving in towards the center, which is typical in this type of mass loss. Based on the Hubble images, the gas has been cleared out all the way down to the central 6,400 light-years.

Within that central region, there is still a lot of gas, as seen in a burst of star formation. "This region is the only place in the galaxy where gas exists and star formation is taking place," Cramer said. "But now that gas is being stripped out of the center, forming the long tail."

Adding to this compelling narrative is another galaxy, appearing to the lower left of D100 in the image, that foreshadows D100's fate. The object, named D99, began as a spiral galaxy similar in mass to D100. It underwent the same violent gas-loss process as D100 is now undergoing, and is now a dead relic. All of the gas was siphoned from D99 between 500 million and 1 billion years ago. Its spiral structure has mostly faded away, and its stellar inhabitants consist of old, red stars. "D100 will look like D99 in a few hundred million years," Kenney said.

The Coma cluster is located 330 million light-years from Earth.

The team's results appear online in the January 8, 2019, issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.

Hubble Space Telescope (HST): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Karl Hille/Space Telescope Science Institute/Donna Weaver/Ray Villard/Yale University/Jeffrey Kenney/William Cramer.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Cargo Ship Takes out Trash; Crew Works on Cygnus Preps and Science Hardware

ISS - Expedition 58 Mission patch.

January 25, 2019

A Russian cargo ship left the International Space Station this morning and was deorbited for a destructive demise over the Pacific Ocean. The Expedition 58 crew now turns its attention to the departure of a U.S. space freighter next month.

The Progress 70 (70P) resupply ship ended its six-and-a-half month stay at the station when it undocked from Pirs docking compartment today at 7:55 a.m. EST. It descended into Earth’s atmosphere less than four hours later loaded with trash and discarded gear and burned up safely over the southern Pacific.

Image above: Jan. 25, 2019: International Space Station Configuration. Three spaceships are parked at the space station including the Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply ship and Russia’s Progress 71 resupply ship and Soyuz MS-11 crew ship. Image Credit: NASA.

Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus commercial cargo vessel is next up, scheduled to depart the Unity module in early February. Astronauts Anne McClain and David Saint-Jacques have been reviewing Cygnus departure procedures and carefully packing the spaceship throughout the week.

McClain and Saint-Jacques spent Friday working on a variety of science hardware and life support gear aboard the orbital lab. The duo first set up gear to measure airflow inside Japan’s Kibo laboratory module. Next, they serviced a pair of science freezers nicknamed MELFI and GLACIER that store research samples at ultra-cold temperatures.

International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: NASA

NASA’s McClain also replaced hardware in the Actiwatch Spectrum, a wearable device that analyzes an astronaut’s sleep quality, sleep onset, hyperactivity and other daily routines. Saint-Jacques from the Canadian Space Agency activated a new 3D printer known as the Refabricator that uses recycled plastics.

Commander Oleg Kononenko from Roscosmos monitored this morning’s 70P undocking and photographed the departing spacecraft. The station veteran also checked on Russian laptop computers and participated in a study that explores how cosmonauts adapt to complex space tasks.

Related links:

Expedition 58: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition58/index.html

Pirs docking compartment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/pirs-docking-compartment

Unity module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/unity

Kibo laboratory module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/japan-kibo-laboratory

MELFI: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=56

GLACIER: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=342

Actiwatch Spectrum: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=838

Refabricator: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7321

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

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

Best regards, Orbiter.ch