Expedition 69 Crew Undertakes Various Tasks on the International Space Station

NASA astronaut and Expedition 69 Flight Engineer Stephen Bowen recently installed student-made hardware near the Destiny laboratory module’s Microgravity Science Glovebox. The hardware was designed to improve the stability of the cameras that are used for tracking targets and capturing videos and images within the International Space Station.

In preparation for a upcoming cargo shipment, the Expedition 69 Crew spent a productive Friday focusing on robotics training, stowage practice, and payload movements. Woody Hoburg (a NASA astronaut) began his workday by collecting more samples for Standard Measures investigation. Then he cleaned the Tranquility module of stowage.

Sultan Alneyadi, a Flight Engineer from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), joined Hoburg later to help with the untying of the NanoRacks external platform from the NanoRacks Bishop Airlock. Hoburg also repaired ethernet cables in the Astrobee docking stations of the Japanese Experiment Modules (JEM). He and NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio performed a second robotics training session in the afternoon to prepare for the rendezvous with and capture of Cygnus, the cargo spacecraft.

Rubio was able to capture the NanoRacks External Platform, after it had been removed. He then moved it onto the JEM. Stephen Bowen, Rubio and him also removed and stowed the Multi-Purpose Experiment Platform (MPEP) from the Kibo-airlock. Rubio then performed a visual and video inspection of the airlock.

Stephen Bowen, who had troubleshooted the Glovebox Freezer on the previous day, checked and inspected the connections again. He also replaced the hardware in the BioFabrication Facilities, a 3-D printer designed to investigate the feasibility in printing organ-like tissue in microgravity.

Bowen then set up Kubik 5, 6, and 7 hardware in the Columbus Laboratory module. These hardware sets are designed specifically for self-contained and automatic microgravity experiments within the orbital laboratory. Bowen spent the last part of his workday troubleshooting a fluid physics facility called the Fluids Integrated Rack.

Roscosmos Commander Sergey Prokopyev operated the 3D Printer in the Zvezda Service Module. Andrey Fedyaev performed computer maintenance and cleaned smoke alarms in the Zarya service module. Dmitri Dmitri Dmitri Dmitri Dmitri Dmitri Dmitri Dmitri DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI DMITRI

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