The Expedition 72 crew is packing up finalized science experiments this week for return to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. The Worldwide Area Station residents additionally studied antibiotic resistant micro organism and arrange area botany {hardware}.
Station Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineer Don Pettit, each from NASA, kicked off their day transferring analysis samples from station science freezers into moveable POLAR freezers that can quickly be put in contained in the departing Dragon. Williams then joined NASA Flight Engineer Nick Hague loading and strapping down extra cargo inside Dragon for retrieval and evaluation on Earth.
Dragon is scheduled to undock from the Concord module’s ahead port at 11:05 a.m. EST on Thursday for a splashdown off the coast of Florida the next day. NASA’s reside protection of undocking and departure begins at 10:50 a.m. EST on NASA+. Discover ways to watch NASA content material by quite a lot of platforms, together with social media.
Pettit later spent the remainder of his shift with NASA Flight Engineer Butch Wilmore processing micro organism samples within the Kibo and Concord modules to grasp why some pathogens are stronger within the microgravity surroundings. The duo was utilizing genetic evaluation methods to determine the antibiotic resistant organisms and assist researchers shield crew well being on long-term area missions. These samples may even be collected and packed inside Dragon this week for return and evaluation again on Earth.
Williams arrange analysis elements contained in the Superior Plant Habitat to assist an upcoming experiment to grasp how totally different water ranges have an effect on plant development in area and the microbes that reside on crops. Outcomes might result in improved strategies for rising meals on Earth and in area. Hague started putting in a small satellite tv for pc deployer on Kibo’s multipurpose experiment platform that can quickly be positioned into the vacuum of area to launch a collection of CubeSats.
Working within the Roscosmos phase of the area station, Flight Engineer Aleksandr Gorbunov used totally different wavelengths to picture pure and human-caused situations on Earth then jogged on a treadmill for a health analysis. His fellow cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner spent their day monitoring carbon dioxide ranges and servicing the atmospheric purification system within the orbital lab’s Roscosmos phase amongst different life assist duties.
Study extra about station actions by following the area station weblog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, in addition to the ISS Fb and ISS Instagram accounts.
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