NASA Space Station Status Report 1 April, 2022 – Light Duty Headed Into the Weekend

Four Expedition 67 astronauts, who have been aboard the International Space Station since November, kicked off the weekend with a light duty day today following a pair of spacewalks and a crew swap in March.
The orbiting lab’s newest crewmates, three Flight Engineers from Roscosmos, stayed busy with their science and maintenance tasks.

March was a busy month in space that saw two spacewalks, the arrival of three new cosmonauts, and finally the departure of three crewmates officially ending Expedition 66. Three NASA astronauts and one ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut took a well-deserved break on Friday following the intense period aboard the orbiting lab.

NASA Flight Engineers Kayla Barron and Raja Chari conducted the first spacewalk on March 15. Chari then joined ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer on March 23 for another spacewalk. The spacewalks were dedicated to preparing the space station for its third roll-out solar array and installing electronics and communications gear.

On March 18, the crew welcomed cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Sergey Korsakov, and Denis Matveev, when they docked in their Soyuz MS-21 crew ship almost three-and-a-half hours after launching from Kazakhstan. Expedition 66 ended on March 30 when the Soyuz MS-19 crew ship undocked returning NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov back to Earth just four hours later.

In the station Russian segment today, Artemyev and Matveev set up the Poisk module’s airlock for future spacewalk work planned for the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. Korsakov worked in Zvezda service module performing preventative maintenance on the ventilation system. The cosmonauts also continued getting familiar with space station systems two weeks into their six-and-a-half-month mission.

On-Orbit Status Report

Payloads:

Dose Distribution Inside the ISS – 3D (DOSIS-3D): The DOSIS-3D Passive Detector Packages (PDPs) were photographed before and after relocation to the Service Module ceiling area. DOSIS-3D uses several active and passive detectors to determine the radiation doses inside the ISS. The goal is a three-dimensional radiation map covering all sections of the ISS.

Gravitational References for Sensimotor Performance: Reaching and Grasping (GRASP): Following the completion of the science sessions earlier in the week, today the GRASP hardware was stowed. The purpose of the GRASP investigation is to better understand how the central nervous system (CNS) integrates information from different sensations (e.g. sight or hearing), encoded in different reference frames, in order to coordinate the hand with the visual environment. More specifically, the science team seeks to better understand if, and how, gravity acts as a reference frame for the control of reach-to-grasp.

Grip: Following the completion of the Grip science sessions earlier in the week, the Grip hardware was stowed. The Grip experiment studies the long-duration spaceflight effects on the abilities of human subjects to regulate grip force and upper limbs trajectories when manipulating objects during different kind of movements such as oscillatory movements, rapid discrete movements, and tapping gestures.

Universal Intelligent Glass Optics (UNIGLO): The fiber optic cable spool and preform were exchanged twice, and the ground initiated two runs in an increased nitrogen environment. The preform is a cylindrical rod of raw material from which the fiber is pulled. UNIGLO tests the effects of microgravity on a glass optics module capable of processing various types of complex glasses. The module uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help adapt materials processing techniques to the microgravity environment and a sensor based on laser-Doppler interferometry to measure the effects of microgravity on processing complex glasses for a variety of applications in space and on Earth.

Systems:

Waste and Hygiene Compartment (WHC) Manual Fill Initiation and Termination: Today, the crew initiated a manual fill of the WHC E??-?? (Water Container) using a Post-Flight Analysis Bag to capture any pressure relief to protect the dose pump. The ???-CB is intended for short-term storage and manual water transportation between facilities. After successfully filling the E??-??, the crew returned the WHC to nominal use.

Space Station Computer (SSC) 20 and 22 Swap: Today, the crew moved SSC 20 from Dragon to LAB and moved SSC 22 from LAB to Dragon. SSCs are swapped regularly to ensure that International Procedures Viewer (IPV) backups are applied to SSCs remaining in Dragon for emergency situations. SSCs are the laptops associated with non-command activities onboard the ISS.

Completed Task List Activities:

IFM Steel Ruler Gather
Today’s Ground Activities:
All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.

Electrical Power System (EPS) Solar Array Voltage Maximum Power (VMP) Evaluation [In Work]
Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Metal Oxide (METOX) Regeneration Support
Portable Computer System (PCS) Remote Reboot and Log Files Downlink
Look Ahead Plan

Saturday, April 2 (GMT 92)
Payloads:

Off-Duty
Systems:

Crew Off-Duty
Sunday, April 3 (GMT 93)
Payloads:

Veggie Monitor Analysis Photo (NASA)
Systems:

EHS – SSK and MAS Analysis
Monday, April 4 (GMT 94)
Payloads:

APM Status Check
AstroRad HW Gather and Review
Cold Atom Lab MTL Jumper Leak Check
EarthKAM Node 2 Setup and Activation
ELF Cartridge Exchange
IGO Probe Exchange
LIDAL Return2
Vascular Aging
Systems:

SpX-Crew Dragon Emergency Equipment Gather
NOD2O2 Cleanout
Transfer Cygnus Cargo Ops
IFM OGA Post Maintenance Flush
SpX Crew Dragon Review CBT
IFM OGA Pump ORU Stow
Crew Dragon Forward Monthly PCS Checkout
SODF EMER-1a Update
ECLSS OGS Hardware Gather
EVA Battery Ops
Today’s Planned Activities:
All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.

Photo Documentation of DOSIS Passive Detector Packages
Intelligent Glass Optics Sample Exchange
GRASP Stow
Crew stows GRIP Supine Bag
Columbus Bay 1, 2, 3 Restow
Intelligent Glass Optics GN2 Valve Close
IFM SM Transfer Tunnel (???) IWIS Strain Gauge Cable Swap
METOX Regeneration Termination
IFM SM Transfer Tunnel (???) IWIS Strain Gauge Checkout Part 2
WHC Manual Fill Initiation and Termination
Polar Desiccant Swap
SSC 20 and 22 Swap