Spacewalk Training, Science Maintenance on Schedule for Wednesday

Expedition 64 Flight Engineer Kate Rubins is pictured with spacewalk hardware inside the Quest airlock where spacewalks in U.S. spacesuits are staged.
Expedition 64 Flight Engineer Kate Rubins is pictured with spacewalk hardware inside the Quest airlock where spacewalks in U.S. spacesuits are staged.

Spacewalk preparations and science maintenance tasks kept the seven-member Expedition 64 crew busy today aboard the International Space Station.

Two NASA astronauts are getting ready for a pair of spacewalks scheduled for Jan. 27 and Feb. 1. Flight Engineers Michael Hopkins and Victor Glover will spend about six and a half hours during both excursions upgrading science hardware and high definition cameras. The duo trained on a computer throughout the day on a variety of spacewalking techniques and procedures.

The orbiting lab is humming everyday with numerous science experiments investigating how microgravity impacts a diverse range of phenomena including biology and physics. The facilities that host and power those space studies are constantly attended to, both remotely from ground specialists and directly from the astronauts.

NASA Flight Engineer Kate Rubins, on her second station mission, worked on life science gear today maintaining ongoing research operations. She first swapped centrifuge components inside the Human Research Facility that evaluates physiological, behavioral, and chemical changes that take place in space. Rubins then spent the afternoon servicing the BioLab automated research device that enables observations of small organisms from microbes to plants.

JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi installed new combustion hardware in the Multipurpose Small Payload Rack that will help scientists and engineers improve fire safety aboard spacecraft. Shannon Walker of NASA updated a computer that supports external payloads on the station. She then cleaned a device that monitors and measures the small forces the station experiences as it orbits Earth.

The two cosmonauts, Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Flight Engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, started the day processing their blood samples for a Russian space immunity study. Ryzhikov then replaced smoke detectors and cleaned ventilation filters. Kud-Sverchkov expanded on the immunity research before setting up Earth observation hardware at the end of the day.



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