Friday was mostly a light-duty day for the seven-member Expedition 73 crew aboard the International Space Station. However, the orbital residents did set aside some time at the end of the week for research, an emergency drill, and a conference with mission managers on the ground.
NASA flight engineers Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, and Jonny Kim joined station Commander Takuya Onishi of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and wrapped up their shift with a pair of space-to-ground conferences. The quartet’s first conference was with the chief of NASA’s astronaut office followed by a second conference with their expedition’s flight director. The short bi-weekly conferences are held so the astronauts and mission managers can discuss a range of topics including upcoming missions and crew activities.
Earlier in the day, Ayers spent a few moments swapping syringes containing protein samples and installing test cells inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox. She was maintaining a fluid physics study exploring surface tension to contain liquids and observe proteins without contacting solid walls. Results may benefit pharmaceutical manufacturing and 3D printing techniques on and off the Earth.
Kim completed a 48-hour session wearing the sensor-packed Bio-Monitor vest and headband that continuously measured his health data as he worked, exercised, and slept. Doctors are testing the health-monitoring hardware for its comfort and reviewing the downlinked data that includes heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature. He also joined cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky to practice an emergency drill on station.
Flight Engineer Kirill Peskov worked a half-shift on Friday, servicing Earth observation gear that captures imagery of landmarks on the ground in a variety of wavelengths. Ryzhikov spent the second half of his day on electronics maintenance in the station’s Roscosmos segment.
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.