Ten Residents Aboard Station Wrap Up Week with Space Biology

Space biology led the research schedule for the seven-member Expedition 66 crew aboard the International Space Station on Friday. The orbiting lab’s three guests also spent their day on a variety of Russian space experiments.

NASA Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Kayla Barron partnered up throughout the day replacing components inside the Advanced Plant Habitat. Three-time station resident Thomas Marshburn of NASA prepared the Mouse Habitat Unit for upcoming rodent research.

Flight Engineer Matthias Maurer of ESA (European Space Agency) collected his blood sample and analyzed it using the Bio-Analyzer. At the end of the day, he joined Marshburn for retina scans conducted by NASA Flight Engineer Raja Chari using specialized imaging hardware with support from doctors on the ground.

Station commander and cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov worked on a pair of studies exploring how weightlessness affects the cardiovascular system and microbes then charged batteries inside the Soyuz MS-19 crew ship. Roscosmos Flight Engineer Pyotr Dubrov continued servicing and photographing bacteria samples for the Microvir space virus investigation.

Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, commander of the 11-day Soyuz MS-20 mission, serviced samples for a Russian microbiology study and had an Earth photography session. The two spaceflight participants from Japan, Yusaku Maezawa and Yozo Hirano, contributed to a study that explores how space affects the circulatory system.