The Expedition 49 trio orbiting Earth inside the International Space Station are less than two weeks away from welcoming three new crew members. As the station residents wait for the new arrivals, they continue conducting space science and maintaining station systems.
Commander Anatoly Ivanishin with Flight Engineers Kate Rubins and Takuya Onishi have been living in space for two months. They are awaiting reinforcements scheduled to join them two days after a Sept. 23 launch from Kazakhstan. Soyuz Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Flight Engineers Shane Kimbrough and Andrey Borisenko are reviewing their flight plan and familiarizing themselves with the new Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft.
Back inside the space station, Commander Ivanishin started his day researching how crew activities affect the station structure and exploring how the circulatory system adapts to microgravity. Afterward, he setup a laptop computer and worked on more science and Russian maintenance tasks.
Onishi setup some simple experiments today to show how space affects the flight of a paper plane, a spinning ball and buoyancy among other phenomena. The results were videotaped for sharing to Asian audiences to promote the understanding of spaceflight.
Rubins installed a Phase Change Heat Exchanger into an experiment rack. The new Phase Change HX payload will test ways to regulate thermal conditions on future spacecraft.
Get weekly video highlights at: http://jscfeatures.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/
Good to see these Astronauts getting it done. Look forward to watching them in the upcoming months.
This sounds really cool. As astronauts how much of adjustment does it take when you arrive back to earth? Physiologically it has to do a number on the body to travel to such high altitudes and then travel back to reality. Appreciate it. Good luck in the coming months.