Spacewalk Preps, Robotics Jobs, and Science Duties Fill Tuesday Schedule
NASA Science ·
Spacewalking tools and a pair of robotics jobs topped Tuesday’s schedule aboard the International Space Station. The Expedition 75 crew members also kept up their scientific duties configuring botany research hardware and setting up advanced Earth observation gear. The post Spacewalk Preps, Robotics Jobs, and Science Duties Fill Tuesday Schedule appeared first on NASA Science .
Spacewalking tools and a pair of robotics jobs topped Tuesday’s schedule aboard the International Space Station . The Expedition 75 crew members also kept up their scientific duties configuring botany research hardware and setting up advanced Earth observation gear.
Flight engineers Anil Menon of NASA and Joshua Kutryk of CSA (Canadian Space Agency) are continuing their preparations for Thursday’s spacewalk set to begin at 8 a.m. EDT with NASA+ coverage beginning at 6:30 a.m. The duo worked together inside the Quest airlock organizing the tools they will use to install a roll-out solar array on the orbital outpost’s port side truss structure. Menon and Kutryk also printed their spacewalking procedures and inserted them in a small checklist book they will wear on their spacesuit cuffs.
The spacewalkers will be assisted on Thursday by NASA flight engineers Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney who will help them in and out of their spacesuits and command the Canadarm2 robotic arm during the external installation job. Watkins and Delaney each spent an hour on Wednesday reviewing the upcoming spacewalking tasks and configuring Quest for spacesuit operations.
Watkins and Delaney also partnered together and packed a failed Canadarm2 wrist joint that had been replaced earlier during a spacewalk that took place on June 30 . The pair photographed the robotic hardware for inspection, wrapped it in protective covers to seal sensitive components, then loaded it inside a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft for return to Earth in November.
Watkins still had time to prepare a specialized camera with the ability to film the electrical activity of thunderstorms at up to 100,000 frames per second for upcoming research operations inside the Columbus laboratory module . Delaney set up a camera and connected a computer inside the Kibo laboratory module ’s Life Science Glovebox for an investigation that seeks to prevent plant diseases in space and improve spacecraft life support systems.
Roscosmos flight engineer Sergey Teteryatnikov spent his shift inside the Nauka science module operating the European robotic arm to visually inspect the Rassvet module ’s Earth-facing docking port. Meanwhile, his fellow cosmonauts station commander Pyotr Dubrov and flight engineer Anna Kikina installed Earth observation gear to capture multi-wavelength of imagery of islands in the southern Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as South America’s Patagonia region.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog , @space_station on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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The post Spacewalk Preps, Robotics Jobs, and Science Duties Fill Tuesday Schedule appeared first on NASA Science .