It was very busy week on the International Space Station (ISS). The Canadarm2 and a Canadian astronaut are both featured in this weeks ISS recap.
Canada’s Canadarm2 robotic arm guided NASA astronaut Anil Menon to his worksite during the Aug. 25 spacewalk that completed a swap of the station’s space-to-ground antenna, the high-speed communications link between the station and Mission Control in Houston.
Meanwhile, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk’s launch to the station aboard SpaceX Crew-13 no longer has a firm date. NASA said Aug. 29 that the mission is on hold after an oxidizer leak was found in Dragon’s propulsion system during standard prelaunch checks, with a new target date to be announced once the review is complete. The launch had been scheduled for Sept. 12.
Read more:
- NASA: NASA, ESA Spacewalkers Finish Installing High-Speed Antenna
- NASA: NASA, SpaceX Adjust Crew-13 Launch Date
Third August spacewalk completes antenna swap
Expedition 75 flight engineers Anil Menon of NASA and Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency spent six and a half hours outside the station on Aug. 25 finishing the antenna replacement they had prepped for since Aug. 20. It was Menon’s third career spacewalk and Adenot’s second, and the station’s 283rd spacewalk overall. The pair spent Aug. 26 cleaning their spacesuits and readying for the next excursion.
Read more:
- NASA: Expedition 75 is Go for Tuesday Spacewalk to Install High-Speed Antenna
- NASA: NASA, ESA Astronauts Suiting Up for Antenna Installation Spacewalk
- NASA: NASA, ESA Astronauts Begin Spacewalk to Install Antenna
Station gets an orbital boost
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo craft, docked at the station since April, fired its thrusters for 20 minutes and 43 seconds on Aug. 27, lifting the station’s orbit by two-tenths of a mile at its highest point and 2.6 miles at its lowest, to a new orbit of 266.5 by 254.9 miles. Cygnus XL is due to undock in October for disposal.
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Science and technology experiments
The crew also kept up a full slate of health research this week. NASA’s Jessica Meir used the station’s ultrasound equipment to scan Anil Menon’s neck veins and check his blood pressure, with researchers on the ground watching in real time, then repeated the scan on Roscosmos’s Andrey Fedyaev to see how weightlessness affects blood flow.
ESA’s Sophie Adenot exercised in the EasyMotion suit, which sends small electrical pulses into the muscles during a workout so scientists can study how muscles respond in microgravity.
Roscosmos’s Anna Kikina wore heart-rate and blood-pressure sensors for a full 24 hours, awake and asleep, to track how her body is adapting to extended spaceflight, while NASA’s Jack Hathaway restocked the station’s medical research equipment. And Roscosmos’s Pyotr Dubrov also serviced the Vozdukh system that scrubs carbon dioxide from the station’s air.
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Crew-13, Joshua Kutryk training
Although not from the past week, NASA’s Johnson Space Center did recently release a 20 minute video of some of their training.
Crew-13 includes NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, as well as CSA astronaut Josh Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov.
Looking ahead
The crew is now preparing for a fourth spacewalk on Sept. 1, when Adenot and NASA’s Jessica Meir will replace a visiting spacecraft’s navigational aid, install data-relay jumper cables, prepare the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer for a future upgrade, and swap a high-definition camera. That spacewalk is expected to run about six and a half hours.
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