The Expedition 73 crew aboard the International Space Station continued work with Dragon cargo, advanced space experiments, and maintenance of orbital systems.
NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers with the help of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut and station commander Takuya Onishi work continued building toward the undocking of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft by stowing and transferring cargo inside the spacecraft.
Ongoing work with the Advanced Space Experiment Processor (ADSEP-4) was carried out by NASA astronaut Jonny Kim as he worked through various steps removing quadcassettes from the ADSEP-4 then replaced and retrieved the crystallizer inside of the ADSEP ICC cassette and installed the newly configured quadcassette. For historical documentation Onishi photographed Kim’s work with the ADSEP-4. Results from this new technology with the Advanced Space Experiment Processor (ADSEP-4) could demonstrate that pharmaceutical production in space can be scaled up, supporting the fabrication of materials in space for commercial applications.
Both Onishi, McClain, and Ayers worked on the Environmental Health System’s (EHS) Exploration Potable Water Dispenser. Onishi collected station water samples for in-flight and post-flight analysis. He performed a water sample analysis with focus on detecting various microbes to determine the water quality onboard the station. Meanwhile McClain and Ayers removed and replaced the Exploration Potable Water Dispenser’s controller cards and performed a checks to verify functionality.
McClain later worked to deploy the Life Sciences Glovebox (LSG) work volume and set up the Extant Life Volumetric Imaging System (ELVIS) hardware in the glovebox where she later retrieved and inserted samples from the laboratory freezer. ELVIS is a microscope for 3D imaging of objects as small as bacteria, with the goal of making the technology available to anyone studying microscopic motion in space. The technology demonstration tests the microscope by studying active behavior and genetic changes in microalgae and marine bacteria strains. The imaging technology could be used to monitor water quality, detect potentially infectious organisms, and study liquid mixtures and microorganisms in space and on Earth.
Ayers removed the sophonster container, sensor container, and the microSd card and packed it for stowage. She also inserted a sample into a box module within Minus Eighty-Degree Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI) to refrigerate it. The freezer is a cold storage unit that maintains experiment samples at ultra-cold temperatures throughout a mission.
The station’s three cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritskiy, and Kirill Peskov continued with more Russian segment maintenance. Ryzhikov conducted additional Russian segment inspection activities. Together Ryzhikov and Zubritskiy removed protective screens from the BTN-NEUTRON-2 which is a nuclear physics experiment located in the Russian segment that measures the neutron component of the radiation background in the near-Earth space, spatial and temporal distribution of neutron fluxes and spectra, during solar flares. Peskov continued with his work to reconfiguring and restoring the ventilation system that connects the Russian and U.S. segments.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts. Get the latest from NASA delivered every week. Subscribe here: https://www.nasa.gov/subscribe.