NASA International Space Station On-Orbit Status 22 August 2016
Three astronauts are relaxing today after a spacewalk on Friday and weekend cleanup work. Meanwhile, a pair of spacecraft will be departing the International Space Station over the next two weeks.
NASA astronauts Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins successfully installed a new international docking adapter Friday morning during a five hour and 58-minute spacewalk. Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi assisted the duo from inside the station, while all three cleaned up the Quest airlock afterward where they stowed their spacesuits and tools.
Williams is scheduled to return to Earth on Sept. 6 with cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin ending Expedition 48. The two cosmonauts began their departure preparations today to get the Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft ready for undocking and landing in Kazakhstan.
Before Expedition 48 returns home in two weeks the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will leave the station this Friday at 6:10 a.m. EDT. The crew is loading the space freighter with gear and science for analysis by NASA engineers on the ground. Dragon will splashdown in the Pacific Ocean a few hours after its release Friday and be retrieved by SpaceX personnel.
On-Orbit Status Report
Command and Control (C&C) Multiplexer Demultiplexer (MDM) Transition: The ground executed a planned C&C MDM transition today. C&C 2 MDM was transitioned to primary with C&C 3 MDM in backup and C&C 1 MDM in standby. The transition supports the desired configuration for OA-5, ensuring that the primary Guidance, Navigation and Control (GN&C) MDM and the primary C&C MDM are not on the same power channels.
Columbus Power Distribution Unit 1 (PDU-1) Repower: Last Friday the Columbus Module experienced a power anomaly with Power Distribution Unit 1 (PDU-1), and a subset of the loads on PDU-1 lost power. Systems were automatically safed. All downstream loads have since been repowered with the exception of RapidScat. During an attempt to reactivate RapidScat, outlet 3 on PDU-1 tripped. The only two items downstream of this outlet are RapidScat and Solar Monitoring Observatory (SOLAR), which was deactivated at the time of the trip. RapidScat has active heater power and is able to stay deactivated indefinitely without hardware impact. Ground teams are investigating the cause of the outlet 3 trip.
Payload Activities Completed Over the Weekend:
– Mouse Epigenetics Habitat Cage Unit Maintenance: The crew completed standard maintenance activities by exchanging the food cartridges and refilling the water of Mouse Habitat Cage Units which is located in the Cell Biology Experiment Facility (CBEF).
– Heart Cells Media Change Operations: The crew changed the media in the Multiwell BioCell for Heart Cells and repaired one of the Multiwell BioCells within the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) work volume to provide nutrients to the Heart Cells.
– Biological Rhythms 48 Hours Actiwatch Preparation: In preparation for upcoming Biological Rhythms activities this week, the crew configured of the Actiwatch using the Actiware Software and Medical Laptop.
– NanoRack Module 9: Session 4 of 5 for the NanoRack Module 9 experiment was completed when the crew activated, deactivated, and shook the mixture tubes to facilitate the experiment.
– Fine Motor Skills: A series of interactive tasks on a touchscreen tablet were completed for the Fine Motor Skills investigation.
– Space Headaches: The crew completed the European Space Agency (ESA) Space Headaches questionnaire.
– Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) Hard Drive Change: The crew swapped the AMS hard drives in the UltraBay Adapter in the AMS laptop, which is completed every six months.
